Which was where I hoped we’d stay all that Sunday morning, drawing out the hours until Felix left for his trustees meeting. But there he was, in the first light of the winter morning, nudging me awake with a cup of coffee. I sat up against the pillow and took the cup he handed to me. “Why are you dressed already?”
“I went out for the paper.” The New York Times for January 30, 1921, was so fresh off the press I could smell the ink. “Do you want to read it?”
He knew I usually took my time with the Sunday papers, saving them up to fill the afternoon hours he spent at the orphanage. “Let me have my coffee first.”
“Just the front page.” He unfolded it with trembling hands, as if presenting me with a rare gift. I glanced over the rim of my cup and scanned the headlines, wondering what in the world had happened. The words were blurry at first and I squinted, hoping I was mistaken. But no, there it was, in letters half-an-inch high:
YANKEES PICK SITE FOR NEW BALLPARK
DECIDE TO PURCHASE PROPERTY OF ORPHANED HEBREWS HOME
GREAT STADIUM PLANNED FOR HARLEM PLOT
Glancing down the column, sentences popped out at me. A deal had been reached. Plans had been drawn up. The Colonel had until the end of the week to exercise his option.
My stomach turned inside out. “My God, Felix, what have you done?”
“I told you I’d force his hand.” He tossed the paper on the floor, spilling my coffee across the blanket. “Ruppert’s got no other place to build, you said so yourself. Now that it’s in print, he’ll have to make it official, or look like a fool in front of the whole city.”
I threw back the wet blanket and shoved him aside as I knelt to pick up the paper. The article went into detail about the engineering plans, the cost estimates, even the seating capacity of the proposed stadium. All the information I’d given Felix to help him make his case to the trustees was right there on the front page. “He’ll know it came from me. I’ll be fired, Felix. As soon as the Colonel sees the paper, he’ll know I betrayed his trust.”
His expression shifted as he began to register the enormity of his miscalculation. “I’m sorry, Albert, maybe I hadn’t thought it all the way through. But it’s just a job, you can get another one. For the children, it’s a chance for a whole new life. Their future is more important than either of us.”
His obsession with those children was maddening. “If you think the Colonel will ever do business with the orphanage now, you’re delusional.”
The color drained from his cheeks as his lip started to tremble. “You’re wrong, Albert. You’re only worried about yourself. Ruppert won’t miss out on the chance to build in Manhattan.”
I was gathering the words to tell Felix that trust and privacy were the Colonel’s watchwords, that he’d never consummate a deal with anyone who would expose him in the press this way, when the shrill ring of the telephone startled us both. I scrambled to my feet. Felix grabbed my arms, stopping me. “Albert, wait, I didn’t mean—”
“Get out of my way, damn it.” My instinct to answer the Colonel’s call was stronger than my dread at hearing the words he was certain to hurl at me. I imagined him on the other end of the line, the New York Times quivering in his angry hands.
“Half you seen zee paper?” His fury so exaggerated his accent, my brain assumed he was speaking German. I answered in kind.
“Ja, ich habe es gesehen.” The words were out of my mouth before I switched back to English. “I’m so sorry, sir, I—”
“Get over here, Kramer. Immediately.” The line went dead. I fumbled the receiver twice before hanging it back on its cradle. I looked around for Felix, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then I heard footsteps clomping down the stairs and a door slam. I ran to the front window and watched him stumble down the stoop, toppling precariously as he missed a step. Instinctively, I stretched out my hand to steady him, my fingers pressed against the glass.
My guts were a knot of nerves as I got dressed, grabbed my coat, and hailed a cab. At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 93rd Street I stalled for time, staring at the ruin of the Ruppert mansion. Only last Sunday, we’d had dinner in front of the fire in the parlor. Now it was shrouded in scaffolding, windows knocked out and the chimney dismantled. At this rate, the developer would be able to start construction in the spring on a new apartment building identical to the one across the street, which is where I now dragged my reluctant feet, like a criminal giving himself up to the police.
I was shocked when the Colonel opened the door in a wool dressing gown knotted over his silk pajamas, hair uncombed and slippers on his feet. In the five years I’d known the man, I’d never seen him in a state of undress. “Where’s Mr. Nakamura?”
He scowled. “I offered him three days off next week if he’d stay with me today. I only moved a few days ago. I don’t know where anything is yet. But nothing can pry that man away from his precious Sundays, though it’s a mystery to me where he goes or what he does.”
The Colonel’s new apartment was restrained, stylish, and modern—everything the Ruppert mansion had never been. I followed him through a series of elegant rooms in which furniture was haphazardly placed and packing boxes were stacked along the walls. In the library, no curtains had yet been hung and morning sunlight lit up the windows. We headed toward a mismatched pair of chairs, my shoes clacking across the parquet floor.
“I’ll need a carpet in here. What do you think, Kramer, nine by twelve?”
Confused, I glanced around the room, estimating its size. “Yes, that would fit.”
“I saw in the paper Bamberger’s has imported some nice Persian Saruks. Why don’t you and Helen go pick one out for me?”
Was he sending me to buy a carpet as my final task before being fired? “If that’s what you want, sir.”
“What I want is a retraction.” Out of habit, I took out my notepad and pencil. “It had to be the Jews who gave all this to the papers. It is you who’s been keeping your neighbor informed of our progress on the stadium, am I right?”
My courage failed me and I equivocated. “Mr. Stern and I may have discussed—” Only after he interrupted me did I wonder when I’d ever told him Felix and I lived in the same brownstone.
“They have their meeting this afternoon. Get yourself on the agenda. Demand a full retraction. I want complete denial, no half measures, and I want to see it in Monday’s paper.”
The cook, pressed into service as butler for the day, appeared with pastries and coffee. She looked around, uncertain, until I got up and dragged over an unopened box on which she placed the tray. I poured, his with sugar but no milk, mine the opposite. The Colonel accepted the cup I held out to him, stirring the sugar cube with a tiny silver spoon. “You know I hate to see my business made public, Kramer.”
Here we go, I thought. I wondered if I should resign or wait for him to let me go. Either way, the Colonel would never give me a letter of reference. I’d be ruined as a secretary. What other millionaire would want a man he couldn’t trust to handle his personal affairs? I put down my coffee with a trembling hand. “Sir, I—” But he wasn’t done speaking.
“Vince Astor telephoned this morning. ‘What the hell is this about an option on some orphanage,’ he said. ‘I thought we had a deal.’ I told him we would have a deal if we could come to terms. Otherwise, I said, I’d go ahead and build my stadium in Harlem.” The Colonel laughed. “I should let my business leak to the press more often, Kramer. Astor has agreed to my price.” He pointed a finger at me. “Not a word to anyone until the ink is dry, but we should have an announcement by the end of this week.”
“You’re buying land from Astor?” I couldn’t believe it. Felix had been right all along.
“In the Bronx, right across the river from the Polo Grounds.” His mouth stretched into a delighted smile. “Wait until the Giants see what we have planned. This country has never had a stadium to match it. It will be New York’s own Coliseum. Tillinghast Huston and I agreed to let Osborn Engineering think they were
designing it for that orphanage parcel in case the press got wind of it, but all we have to do is reorient the plan to situate it on the new site.”
I felt strangely like a cheated lover. “I had no idea, sir.”
“I didn’t want you knowing too much, living next door to one of their trustees. As long as you believed we were serious about that orphanage, the less likely the Jews were to entertain other offers. I like to have something in my back pocket, just in case. Now, though, I wouldn’t buy from them if they paid me.”
I was stunned to realize he’d used me as a diversion. And why would he assume I’d pass information along to Felix? Perhaps he suspected all along that we were more than neighbors. I thought back again to when I wore the red bow tie to work. But if that was all it took for the Colonel to know the truth about me, what did that say about him? “I saw you last week with Mr. Astor, at the Hamilton Lodge Ball.”
The Colonel sat back in his chair. “I know you did, Kramer. You were smart to steer clear of us. I figured you could guess what I was up to. I didn’t even tell Huston how close we were to a deal until he saw the paper today and called me, ranting and raving.” As if on cue, the telephone on his desk began to ring. “Go on now, Kramer, get me that retraction. And be at the brewery early tomorrow. We have a busy week ahead of us.”
The doorman had ushered me out of the building before I fully understood what just transpired. The way the Colonel did business often took me by surprise—he’d draw things out until suddenly there it was, the deal struck, signed, and notarized. But this? I’d thought I was integral to his stadium plans, yet he’d kept me in the dark. Perhaps, though, in revealing to me how he’d manipulated my relationship with Felix, he’d tipped his own hand. Who but another pansy would have suspected I was Felix’s lover? And yet, he’d admitted nothing about himself. If we were part of the same world, why not acknowledge it?
As confounded as I was by the Colonel, it was a profound relief to know I hadn’t betrayed him. Even so, the deal Felix had been working toward was ruined. The orphanage would never raise the money now to build those charming cottages out in Westchester. The children would remain confined to their castle in the city. I pictured Felix crippled with regret. Desperate to console him, I hailed a taxi, urging the cabbie to drive faster across the park.
But Felix hadn’t come back to the brownstone. I telephoned his parents’ house, but he wasn’t there, either. I called the main office at the orphanage, locating him at last, but he wouldn’t come to the telephone. All I could do was ask to be put on the agenda, my action item the Colonel’s demand for a retraction.
So it was that I found myself pacing the wide hallway of the Orphaned Hebrews Home that afternoon, waiting for the trustees to call me into their meeting. When Felix had trotted me out at that fund-raising gala, he represented my presence as tantamount to the Colonel’s signature on an option. Now, I’d have to call him a liar in front of everyone.
A secretary brought me in, then took her place in the corner, a stenographer’s pad balanced on her knee. I noticed a pyramid of rye breads stacked on a side table, the huge loaves scenting the air with caraway seed. Looking around, I recognized some of the men from the gala, including Felix’s father, who didn’t usually attend these meetings. Felix must have called him in to reinforce his position, despite the embarrassing tremor that shook his father’s hands. And there was Felix, at the far end of the long table. His eyes were cast down, as if reading his own palms. What future did he see there, I wondered?
I was introduced. I did not sit. As simply as I could, I explained that Colonel Jacob Ruppert, though he had long been interested in the possibility of erecting a stadium on this property, had never suggested a deal nor signed an option. Though it was true he’d hired Osborn Engineering to develop a plan for the stadium, he’d never specified it was to be situated on this site. When the engineers confirmed the story to the papers, they were simply mistaken. “I can understand how Mr. Stern might have taken the Colonel’s interest to mean more than it did. No one is at fault, but now that the misunderstanding has been made public, Colonel Ruppert insists on a public retraction.”
“And what about the children?” A dozen heads turned toward the sound of Felix’s voice, cracked with emotion. “What are we supposed to tell them? That some millionaire got his pride hurt, and that’s why they’ll never live in the fresh air and sunshine?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Felix’s father spared me from speaking. “That’s enough, son.” He raised a trembling hand and placed it on the table, capitalizing on his infirmity to shame Felix into silence. “You tried your best, we all know that. But this is business now. We’ll face a libel suit if we don’t retract the story. We’ll contact the New York Times this afternoon, Mr. Kramer. You’ll see your retraction in tomorrow’s paper.”
Felix twisted around in his chair and hung his head. I wanted to leap across that table and take him in my arms. Instead, I looked away and thanked the gathered men for their time. The secretary showed me out. I found my own way to the entrance, promising myself that as soon as Felix and I were alone together, I’d find the words I needed to make this right.
But he never came home. For hours I watched for him out the window, but no matter how hard I stared he didn’t appear. I picked up the telephone to call his parents but was afraid he’d simply refuse to speak to me. Instead, I did the unthinkable and went to their house. A crack of light appeared in a window as curtains were drawn back in response to my ring. I waited so long I was about to ring again when Felix’s father answered the door. Instead of inviting me in, he stood beside me in the cold vestibule, having put on a coat for this very purpose.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kramer, it’s thoughtful of you to inquire, but I’m afraid my son is not up for a visitor right now.”
I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice as I pled my case. “But I have to talk to him about the meeting today. I’m so sorry about everything.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself, Mr. Kramer. Felix has done this before.”
Done what, I wondered—broken a man’s heart?
“Convinced himself of things that weren’t true.” Mr. Stern thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “If I may speak with you in confidence, Mr. Kramer? Sometimes my son becomes fixated on a person, or an idea, that he can’t let go of. When he’s finally confronted with the truth, as you did today, it can precipitate a crisis.”
I remembered what Felix had told me about suffering a breakdown after college. “A crisis, what does that mean?”
“The last time, he needed a long rest in the country before he was himself again. This time we’re taking him to Vienna. There’s a doctor there who specializes in cases like his.”
I felt as if I’d been plunged into an icy river, my heart stopped by the cold shock. “You’re taking him to Vienna?”
“We’ve booked passage on the Zeeland. It departs Tuesday. His mother and I are going with him to make it look like a vacation. He has enough clothes here for the journey, but perhaps you could do us the favor of packing up his apartment? We’ll send someone to pick up his things.”
I thought of that trick Houdini did, chained in a locked box and dropped from a bridge into the frozen Hudson. “Can’t I see him, at least, to say good-bye? There’s so much to explain.”
Mr. Stern cleared his throat. “Our doctor has insisted he be kept sedated until we’re at sea. He was rather wild after the meeting this afternoon. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you’ve been such a good friend to him.”
How Houdini struggled underwater with the chains and locks. “You can tell me anything, I’m sure Felix wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he has a tendency to hurt himself when he’s distressed. We thought he’d overcome it these past few years. You’ve been a good influence on him, Mr. Kramer. But this afternoon he seemed in danger of doing himself irreparable harm.”
Houdini had almost died down there, lungs on fire an
d vision fading to black, until the ghost of his mother appeared, guiding him to a hole in the ice. “Please, Mr. Stern, let me see him. I’m sure I could help—”
He withdrew a trembling hand from his pocket and reached for the door. With a concentrated effort, he closed his fingers around the knob and pulled it open, giving me no choice but to step outside. “I’ll let him know you came by once we’re safely at sea.”
I staggered blindly up Central Park West, my mind as numb as my hands and feet. I imagined Felix slumped in a chair, eyes glassy from laudanum, those long hands of his limp in his lap. I was drowning in guilt for abandoning him, but what more could I have done? His parents didn’t know what we were to each other. If they did, they’d have sent him away years ago.
I turned down my street. There, on my stoop, haloed in lamplight, stood Helen. Without a word, she opened her arms to me. I grabbed hold of her, gasping.
Chapter 27
I’d known that morning, when my brother had shown me the article in the Sunday paper, that something was terribly wrong. Albert had never said anything about a deal for the orphanage property, and Jake would never announce something so momentous as a new stadium in such an undisciplined way. I’d come to the brownstone after a day of telephone calls had gone unanswered. I’d been ringing Albert’s bell to no avail. I was about to let myself in when I turned and saw him lurching blindly up the street. I thought he was drunk until I saw the tragic mask of his face.
Whatever calamity had befallen him, I knew it was of a greater magnitude than some workplace mishap. He didn’t need to speak for me to understand his desperation. He collapsed into my open arms, knocking me back against the brownstone’s front door. Somehow I managed to fit a key into the lock. We stumbled into the vestibule, where the composer and his young friend saw us struggling. Together we got Albert up the stairs and into his apartment. The composer told his friend to go find Felix, but now was no time for neighbors. “Never mind that. I’ll take care of him,” I said, shutting them out in the hallway.
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