“Have you given any thought,” he shouted, “to what will happen to your jobs if the ticket of Edward Parsons Smith takes the ballot this year?”
He wore new trousers, a starchy shirt, black suspenders clamped to his belt line. His hair was trimmed neat up the side of his head. Madge Holloran, Tom Dennison’s secretary, took him to the Brandeis department store the morning he started. He got a whole wardrobe. Madge paid cash. Navy and gray wool suits, matching vests and shoes, a pocket watch, a half-dozen shirts with underclothes. He was given brass money clips for his new reserves of cash. One for his own stash and another for what belonged to the machine.
Some jobbers stopped on the walkway to inspect the gold chain that hung from his vest. The jobbers were jug-eared. Their skin burned red from arc flashes and showers of sparks. Some chewed bread crusts.
“You got the chance to improve your life,” Jake told them. “The fine luck of choosing between two slates of very different men. If you want blue laws down here, vote for the other guy. If you want a closed-up town, vote for Ed Smith. It won’t make anything better. It won’t stop crime, no matter what any brass band reformer says.”
Stumping like this was dangerous. The war was on. Every day more boys returned from overseas crippled or limbless, or with some twitching neurosis caused by mustard gas and shell shock. To mount a stool on a street corner for any purpose other than proclaiming America’s greatness was risky. That was why men stopped to watch. They looked at him with half grins and raised eyebrows, waiting to see if a fight broke out. If there was no fighting the men spoke up with complaints. A few of them pulled on Jake’s sleeve. “Is there a party? With girls?” “Don’t you have any whiskey?” “How about silver dollars?”
Evie Chambers was at the back of the crowd that morning. Jake spotted her, her body an apparition among the shoulders of jobbers. He lost his words when he saw her. The brown curls and sloping neck, the way her eyes flashed desperation.
“Give us something!” the jobbers shouted, angry at being ignored. “Can’t you get me a better job?” “Yeah! How’s about yours? You’re not doing it!”
Jake didn’t hear the men laughing. He stared at Evie. A black cap secured by pins was nearly swallowed in the mass of her hair as she pushed through the crowd. “Don’t you know what you did?” she asked. “I know it was you. You’re the one.”
This is how Jake met Evie. She thumped his chest with her fists until he stumbled off the footstool to an uproar of cruel jobber laughter.
“You’re the one who took him,” she said. “You owe me something for that.”
Jake tried to lay hands on her shoulders but she slapped him away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Yes, you do. There was a bounty. That’s why you did it.”
Jobbers shoved him against her. “Go on, honey. Take what’s yours! Beat it out of him!”
“You have the wrong guy,” Jake insisted. The way she looked at him was pitiful. Her lips pale with sorrow, two flat curls of hair not quite covering her ears.
“I should say it’s you. You’re the one who did it. Everyone knows that.”
Another girl came rushing down the sidewalk.
“Evie! They’re putting you out! All your stuff and everything! I knew they’d do it the moment you left.”
He followed them north of Dodge Street, the confrontation conveniently displaced. He couldn’t stop watching the girl. Her name was Evie. That was what the other one called her. Jake repeated it under his breath to remember.
She argued with a man at the top of a stoop, slapped a clutch of papers out of his hands. As the man bent to pick them up, Evie chased after two brawny black men with a dresser hefted between their arms. She told them to put it back. The two acted like she wasn’t there, careful not to touch her, to not look in her eyes.
Jake recognized the street they were on. This was where he arrived on the Ward, where he’d tied his horse up and let it get stolen. These townhomes were his first glimpse of Omaha. Almost nice ones, jigsawed together from curb to curb, brownstones too close to industry and the pig iron cauldrons of mills, the constant rolling of steel and tails of factory smoke. The windows here framed with lace valance or blocked out with velvet. The doors with stained-glass panels and heavy brass knobs. A sleek Packard Twin was along the curbstone, all shine and varnish. More than a dozen people stopped here now to see a woman put out. Street kids, businessmen in derby hats. Mostly it was women who pulled housecoats over their shoulders as they stood in the street, who bit their lips, or clutched hands to their necks. One wrung her fingers in the folds of a silk kimono. A few of the crass couldn’t wait to inch over and examine what the evictors brought out. To finger a stole or lift a hairbrush studded with rhinestones to her thick-powdered face.
The two evictors wore overalls, shirtsleeves rolled up. They looked like twins, balding on top, with hair so short it revealed their greasy scalps. The rent collector was a beanpole. After Evie yelled at him, he backed away and left the work to the others. One emerged from the door with a tuft of gauzy material hugged against his chest. The second followed with a leather footstool. Evie grabbed the fabric and rushed up the stairs to toss it in her rooms. There was no way she could match their pace. Her belongings cluttered on the sidewalk. Furniture and clothes, a Victrola cabinet with a stack of records, a crate of wine bottles, a lounger of threadbare green upholstery, a pillow to match. The evictors carried a vanity, bottles clinking inside. A short cabinet meant to rest on a dresser that only went to the evictors’ knees when they set it down. Evie rushed behind in a panic, rambling to herself. She checked to make sure none of the bottles had broken, lifting a decanter into the light to examine its rosy liquid. It was a useless thing to do. A second later she chased a boy making off with her rabbit fur coat. Once she had it back, she slipped her arms inside and wore it over the pea coat. Nobody else could grab it. But girls walked off with skirts. Kids took her records. There was talk of renting a truck to load the furniture, and a merchant who’d give them a fair price. All her things would be gone before long. She’d end up on the street, like the girl at the parade the summer before.
Jake approached the rent collector and asked why Evie was being put out.
“Her man got himself killed,” he said. “She’s got no one to pay her rent. That’s how it goes. Don’t give me shit about it. There’s nothing I can do. She stayed on a lot longer than she should of.” Indignation squeezed his elongated features, the thin mustache under his nose. “I hate it when they yell at me. There’s nothing wrong with putting a girl out. She won’t be on the street for long, a pretty one like her. Don’t feel sorry for her. She’s got it good.”
Jake asked if there was anything he could do.
“You mean for her? I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Don’t get involved.” The man shook his head. “All these buildings are owned by madams.”
“Brothels?”
“Mostly.” The man glanced to his paperwork. “Not all of them. I run this building, and there’s no whores who live here. Not the way you mean it.”
Evie splayed on the steps, an arm over her face, the rabbit fur coat bloomed out to reveal her legs. The evictors wouldn’t step over her. They looked to the rent collector and shrugged.
One of them bent to pick her up after the rent collector said to, but when his hand touched her elbow Evie scrambled to the sidewalk. “Don’t let her inside,” the rent collector shouted. The evictors stonewalled her when she ran back with an armful of garments. Gowns fell to the steps as she plowed into them, then fell to her knees. She didn’t cry, though. She fixed eyes on those who stood by to watch her struggle, the ones who walked away with her things. Ruby sequins littered the pavement. Black downy feathers and torn fabric.
“Listen,” Jake said. “What’s it cost for her rooms?”
“Sorry,” the rent collector laughed. “I can’t rent to you.”
“I want her to stay. How much for two months?”
&n
bsp; The man turned. His features narrowed, the mustache trembling.
“Hundred ten,” he said. “That’s in cash, per month. On the spot. Take it or leave it.”
Jake didn’t flinch.
“I’ll get you money for the rooms. But something fair. The room isn’t worth that much.”
The rent collector turned and walked to the steps. He snatched a dress from Evie and tossed it on the pile at the curb.
“You can trust me,” Jake said, trailing. “I work for Tom Dennison. How’s that for credit? I work with him directly. I swear it.”
The rent collector stared Jake in the eye. “I don’t believe you. Anyone can say that.”
“It’s true.”
“What’s Tom Dennison need with you? Don’t waste my time, or I’ll tell someone about your lying. Then you’ll be in real trouble.”
The rent collector turned to pull another gown from Evie’s grasp. He tugged at the material, stretched it until Evie let go and thumped down hard against the steps. She stared at Jake as she had before. She expected him to do something.
Jake had to help her. He took the rent collector by the collar and dragged him down the steps. He slammed the man against the wall, once, to stop his floundering, and then again, because he could. “Don’t have to do me any favors. I work for Tom. Call me on that.”
The evictors were stunned. Jake slammed their boss into the wall again.
“Put her things back,” he told them. He took the papers from the rent collector, folded them carefully, tucked them into his jacket. “You’ll get a fair rent. Just let the girl alone.”
He returned the first chance he had, two days later. He carried a brown paper package on his arm and wore the best of his new suits, a blue handkerchief in the breast pocket. The suit fit snug around his legs, shoulders, and arms.
She opened the door before he even knocked, clutched a robe as she pulled him inside. The furnishings were familiar. The portrait of the sickly girl, the shabby lounging chairs he’d seen cluttered on the sidewalk. There was a pile of clothing in the corner, a brass bed and legless vanity in the other room. Her belongings were thrown around like this was a hotel room. Evie kneeled at the dressing glass, where her combs and cosmetics were, and anointed herself with some alcohol-rich mixture. She was calmer, her body softer, the curls in her hair relaxed and dry. She wore a pink kimono. With perfume bottles unstoppered the rooms smelled like lavender and sweet wine. Jake waited in the entry, the package held to his gut. Evie glanced to him in the mirror as she smoothed a red element on her lips.
“What were you up to today?” she asked. He said he’d worked. “Don’t you want to tell me? I’d like to know what you’re up to, but you don’t have to say.”
Jake looked around. He was under a spell, his flesh alive at the idea of being here. He’d been with plenty of women in Omaha, too many really, but never one who was so girlish and sensual. He could smell her perfumes, her velvet furniture. Neither kitchen nor bedroom was closed off. There were openings where doors had once hung, hinges still screwed to the frame, the main room divided by a canvas screen draped with her clothes. Jake set his package on the radiator then entered the kitchen. He poked at a bread crust to find its underside moldy. Greasy sandwich wrappers were on the counter, fruit peels in the sink, wine bottles along the baseboard. The milk box in the door was empty.
He leaned out the doorway. “Don’t you eat?”
“Why not? When there’s good food, I eat it.”
Past-due bills from a laundry service scattered the counter, weeks-old grocery receipts.
“Why don’t we get some food?”
“No money for food,” she said.
“I can pay, yeah? We’ll go anywhere you want.”
Evie stood on her toes to kiss him. She moved dreamy and graceful, brushing things as she slipped behind the screen to change. He felt the mark her lipstick left on his cheek.
“Anyway. I don’t go out. I take deliveries.” Her pink kimono floated up to land near him. She smiled from around the screen. “They treat me poorly out there. You saw that.”
She emerged in a sundress that drifted over her body, advanced on the balls of her feet, all limbs and round angles. Swinging arms, dress straps off her bare shoulders, toes curling into rug fiber. She hummed a tune as she moved clutter from one spot to another. Plucked garments from the floor and laid them on a chair back. Swept newspapers off a great oak table that took up much of the room. Dozens of suede shoes were sown around, her rabbit fur coat hung over a wire dummy near a rack of feather-garnished hats that would have been scandalous in Jake’s hometown. The rooms were cool and drafty, but Evie didn’t seem to notice in her sundress.
Jake’s collar had doubled over itself at the back of his neck, so she reached to fix it, ran her fingers between the layers of fabric, around his neck, to his chest, until it laid right, then patted the breast of his jacket and pushed back on his shoulders to erase a crick in his posture.
“Don’t slouch, honey. You got nothing to be ashamed of.”
Blood throbbed in Jake’s ears. He felt himself blush, seeing how her top three buttons were undone, and how light from the window shined on her sternum. She breathed. She smiled at him. Her lips pinched when she smiled. It suited her. Hers was a melancholy beauty. The way her eyebrows arched, how curls framed her cheeks, one catching at the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t stand there,” she said. “Aren’t you here to give me something?”
Jake nodded.
“Well, where is it, you brute? Where’s my present?”
He stumbled back to snatch the package from the radiator then pulled her to the Victrola cabinet. “I bought these,” he said. “Boys ran off with yours.”
“That’s what happens when they toss you out. Haven’t you been to an eviction before?”
Jake hadn’t but didn’t say so. He tore the paper to reveal an Enrico Caruso record. The clerk at the Brandeis department store had explained that anyone with a phonograph had to own a Caruso. There was a Rachmaninoff. Another with oldies by Paul Dresser and Harry Von Tilzer. All were suggestions from the clerk. Jake didn’t want Evie to think he was simple. There were compilations of Tin Pan Alley hits, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”
Evie held out the Joplin to see its sleeve before she placed it on the player and lifted the needle from its cork spool. “This one I had.” She turned the side crank to wind the spring motor. Once the deck was spinning, she put her cheek against Jake’s chest so he could put his arms around her. He moved to open space—the music playing, the chiming rises and descents of hothouse piano, the hectic jittering—so they could dance. Her body close to his as he smelled the top of her head. The oil of her hair.
She restarted the Joplin when it finished then led him to a chair, climbed over his hips. “This is awful nice,” she said. She moved fast.
Once Evie kissed him, he thought too much about what was happening. Would she like what he did? Would he lose it quick? Would she want to see him again after? He didn’t know what to do with a woman like Evie. It was different with her. The girls he was used to tended to lie there and let him finish at his own great speed. But Evie paced their bodies. Kissed his ears, rubbed the back of his neck where muscle knotted, squeezed his legs with her legs, moved his hands to her thighs and her goose bumps. Some part of her always in motion touching him. Jake needed to forget himself. God, he was sober. Why hadn’t he stopped for a drink on the way? Her dress flowed up with his fingertips, it was amazing. She undid his belt but he blocked her hands from doing more. She unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, until he couldn’t wait any longer and shucked it over his head. He grabbed around her waist. Kissed her elbow. Jake liked this girl. He’d helped her out because he liked her, not to earn favors. Now this. He wanted to be inside her, further than anyone ever had before. He wanted to win, to see how rough she’d let him be. She reached between his legs but he blocked her. She laughed finally, and kept at him, because this was funny, wasn’t it. He c
huckled. He didn’t understand what he was doing. He wanted to bust out. Nearly exploding in his shorts. But still he stymied her. Fought her hands, wouldn’t let her take his penis out. Their hips knocked, their hands and legs and mouths worked desperate. She breathed and deepened and rubbed on his leg. Mounted over him on the chair. Between her thighs, her swollen, her wet, on his knee. Kissing. Her back arched, unarched. Her breath came out of her.
They sat locked in position. Evie’s skin was dark in the dressing glass. She held him, her face hidden in the crook of his neck. She didn’t move but to breathe.
Jake didn’t know what to say. It was embarrassing how he hadn’t done it to her. All of this went too easy for a girl he actually liked. He’d never tried it sober before, still hadn’t. Never in the daylight.
He’d be good for her next time. He’d show what he could do.
“I got to go to work,” he said.
She straightened and smiled, her cheeks flushed. “You’ll come back and see me?”
He went to a grocer right away. “I want the whole works. Your best fruit. Vegetables. Green beans, spinach, pickled beets, strawberries when you get them. Canned meats, bread, milk.” Jake leaned into the counter over the grocer’s wife as she jotted down his request. He had to make things up to Evie. It was that simple. He pulled the neat fold of machine cash from his pocket and slid it from hand to hand. Nobody would care, he told himself. Nobody would notice if he diverted a little cash to Evie. Jake didn’t have enough of his own money to do something like this. It was only by sneaking from the clip of cash that Tom Dennison had given him that he could afford to pay for Evie’s room and now some groceries too. He wanted to be a big shot. Jake couldn’t help himself. He smelled Evie’s perfume on his face, was still half-hard and aching.
“I want the best you have for as long as I can have it,” he said, then slapped two tens on the counter and wrote Evie’s address in black wax on a paper sack. “Send it here. Say JS sent it.”
Kings of Broken Things Page 10
