The Wicked City

by Beatriz Williams

  “Of course.”

  He makes a gruff noise in the back of his throat and wishes me good night. I wait until his shadow disappears into the maw of the Big House before I straighten away from the giant stone container against which I’m leaning and slip through the doorway into the pool house.

  I’ll say this about the rich: they know how to live. I judge this building is designed for summer entertainment, if the wicker furniture is any indication, to say nothing of the absence of any source of central heat. Large parlor, lined with French doors. White, sanitary new kitchen to the side. Bathroom of bright clean tile. In contrast, the bedroom’s small and made for napping—or possibly something else that has nothing to do with a good night’s sleep—containing only an armchair and what I believe they call a daybed, done up in white sheets and a counterpane of blue-and-white toile. Summery and feminine and much in contrast to the man who sits stiff beneath that counterpane, propped by pillows, thick chest altogether bare except for the wide white gauze swathing his ribs. I find myself a hollow next to his left knee. He gazes warily at me.

  “You could use a shave,” I say.

  He lifts his right hand and touches his jaw. “I apologize,” he says, without a hint of irony.

  “I suppose, on an ordinary night, you’d have shaved before dinner. A good, thick beard like you have. Isn’t that right?”

  “Usually I do, yes.”

  “Is there a razor in the bathroom?”

  “I expect so. But—”

  I rise and fix my stride for said bathroom, and when I return with soap and towel and razor and hot water, the wariness in his navy eyes has transformed into horror. “Don’t you worry,” I tell him, busying brush into soap. “I have three brothers. I can surely shave a man’s chin, when I must. And this is a fine new steel safety razor, besides. You couldn’t cut yourself if you tried. Just you lean back against those pillows, Mr. Anson, and allow me to do the rest.”

  For good measure, I press the tips of my fingers into his right shoulder, and he obeys me. Sinks his back against the pillows and aims his gaze at the ceiling as I swirl suds over the planes of jaw and chin. The shaving soap’s of a fine, expensive grade, producing rich lather that smells of bergamot or something. I never was good at perfume, never could certainly tell the scent of one rare substance from the scent of another. The bedside lamp casts a quiet glow over all that skin, his face and his neck and his beautiful wide shoulders. I don’t know how he endures the chill like that, without a shiver nor even a goose bump. The air’s so heavy and cold, you could almost put out your hand and lift it.

  “You don’t look much like your mother,” I observe. “So delicate and pretty as she is.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “You’re something else. I don’t know what it is. All squares and blocks and dark angles. Did you get that from your father?”

  “Not really. My father’s fair. Elegant, like her.”

  “So you’re a throwback of some kind. Barbarian ancestors. Reckon that’s why you liked football so much, isn’t it? My brother Johnnie’s like that. Lives for football.”

  He flinches. I take his chin in my left hand and lift the razor in my right. Commence to stroke his cheek in long, sure movements. “Your mother told me,” I say. “Mothers do spill all the beans, don’t they? I guess Mama spilled more beans in the past five minutes than you’ve spilled in all these weeks I’ve known you. How you played football for Princeton, for example, and then joined the agency after graduation. Something to do with your brother’s death, I think. Another golden boy, your brother, just like Papa. And you were the dark, silent one. Murder on the football field. Despair of debutantes everywhere. The exact opposite of—what was his name, again?”

  “Tommy.”

  “Tommy. I’m awfully sorry about all that. Poor Anson, losing a brother like that, when you was scarce more than a kid yourself. I truly am sorry.”

  He doesn’t say a word. Just stares a hole in the ceiling and endures the way I rasp carefully along the line of his cheeks, his jaw, his chin, his neck. Orderly rows, uncovering his skin from its thick layer of foam, one stroke at a time. His breath smells of warm brandy. His thick lashes lie dark against his eyelids, so near I could count them. Study each gold tip.

  “But you have another brother, don’t you? A younger brother.”

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  “Let me guess. The young lad’s still in college. Your own alma mater, in fact. The good old orange and black. All the men in your family go to Princeton. Don’t they, Anson?”

  “Yes. Generally speaking.”

  I dip the handsome silvery razor into the bowl for the last time and swish, swish. His face lies before me, immobile, still flecked with soap. There is this beautiful golden cast to his skin, this pink freshness blooming in his cheeks, and he is so young and ancient, both at once, so raw and beautiful and sort of pure, making me think of water running over stone, like when I was young and rambled by myself in the hills around River Junction, and there was nothing but me and the mountainside and the rush of fallen rain hurtling down the stream beds. A state of nature. State of grace. My throat aches. I rise and carry the bowl to the bathroom, where I rinse it out and fill it with hot water. Sink the towel inside. Return and set the bowl on the nightstand and wring the hot cloth in my hands. I can feel Anson’s gaze upon my face as I capture his jaw. His breath on my skin, smelling so opulently of brandy.

  “You might have told me you were Billy’s brother,” I say.

  “I couldn’t take that chance.”

  “Why not? Were you afraid I’d tell you to go to hell?”

  “No. I was afraid you might tell someone else. Let the fact slip. And then my brother would be in danger. My parents would be in danger.”

  “Danger? What kind of danger?”

  “Because your stepfather understands the importance of family, Miss Kelly. If he knew I was still on the case, knowing where I came from …”

  I lift the towel away, wiping his chin as I go. Peer this way and that, as if inspecting my handiwork, when really my heart is smacking hard inside the cavity of my chest. My breath is coming in short, shallow bursts. I look up at last and find his eyes, and there’s an odd, unsteady quality to his gaze, a warmth I don’t recognize, and I remember he’s just had four ounces of perfectly legal medicinal spirits poured down his throat by a doctor, though he is lately but a stranger to the consumption of liquor.

  “So. You were afraid I’d blow your cover. Is that the only reason?” I say.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. You know exactly what I mean.”

  He closes his eyes.

  “Tell me something,” I say. “When did I come in? Was it the chicken or the egg? Did you discover me because of Billy, or was it the other way around?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it does.”

  He opens his eyes again. “Can you really think,” he says slowly, “I’ve only known of you since January?”

  “I’ve only known of you since January.”

  We are awfully close, he and I, there on that bed. My left leg presses against his right. The towel grows cold in my hand, dampening my skirt. Takes all my strength to sit still, locking eyes with this man, absorbing the warmth of his breath, the thrum of his blood rushing under his skin. This knowledge laying itself upon me, waiting to be understood.

  He speaks hoarse, like something’s gone wrong with his throat. “They assigned me to the Kelly case last spring. Found my way to you by summer. But I couldn’t—it wasn’t right, drawing you inside, when you were innocent of it all. The more I learned about you, the more I discovered I just couldn’t use you like that. Couldn’t risk you. I thought I’d find another way. I would track down every shipment, every payment. Go in with my best men.”

  “And your men got killed. And you got canned.”

  “Yes.”

  “And in the meantime, I met Billy. Coincid
ence?”

  “It wasn’t my choice.”

  “Then whose was it?”

  “Julie, I guess,” he says bitterly.

  “Julie Schuyler? But how do you—”

  Another silence falls upon us as I end that sentence that doesn’t really need ending. Because of course he knows Julie Schuyler. Why, Marshalls and Schuylers are practically related, aren’t they? Live on the same avenues, shop at the same uptown department stores, dine at the same restaurants, belong to the same clubs. When Julie Schuyler came out into society in a floating white dress at a grand party at the Ritz-Carlton or someplace, Oliver Marshall’s name no doubt appeared on the dance card that dangled from her precious wrist. And when Special Agent Anson needed a little help tracking down a certain wayward stepdaughter of an Appalachia bootlegger, and discovered a connection between a certain indecent Redhead and same, and furthermore discovered a connection between that indecent Redhead and the thoroughly decent Miss Schuyler, why—

  Well, that sentence hardly needs ending, does it?

  Anson says softly, “When I saw you leaving that party together—”

  “What party?”

  “At Julie’s place.”

  “You were there?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But I didn’t see you!”

  “I didn’t want to be seen. Anyway, I could see Billy was enamored. I didn’t blame him, I guess.”

  “You should have said something. You should have introduced yourself.”

  “You know I couldn’t. It was fair and square, your going off with Billy. I had no right.”

  “I’ll say you had a right. You’ve got a right right now.”

  He doesn’t reply. Just looks at me with those steady eyes, sometimes navy blue and sometimes almost slate, now strangely green in the yellow light of the lamp. His pupils are dilated, black and round. Maybe it’s the pain of his wound, maybe it’s the liquor that was supposed to make it better.

  “Does it hurt?” I whisper, and he nods a little.

  I lean for the nightstand and the medicinal brandy left behind by the good doctor. “Just a little more,” I say, unscrewing the cap, pouring out a wee dram.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Doctor’s orders. He told me himself. Two more ounces. Perfectly legal.”

  He frowns. I press the glass to his lips. Possibly there are more than two ounces inside; I don’t know. I never was any good at estimates of such kind.

  “Be a good boy,” I say, “and take your medicine.”

  His lips part. He lifts his hand to support the glass. When the liquor hits the back of his throat, he winces a little, and then his whole face sort of relaxes, like he’s gone to heaven and seen his Lord before him, shimmering in holy raiment. Empties the glass. I pry it from his fingers and suggest that wasn’t so bad, now, was it? Makes you feel a bit better, when your side’s been cut open by a bootlegger’s bullet?

  “Yes,” he says. Eyes still closed.

  I lean forward to whisper in his ear. “You’re at my mercy. Half-sauced as you are. All bound up in nice white bandages.”

  “Ginger …”

  “I like Billy. He’s a dear boy. But I’m not in love with him, and I never was.”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “It’s over. He’ll find some other girl, a much nicer girl than me. We’ll all have a good laugh about it, when we’re eighty.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking off my blouse and skirt. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Ginger …”

  “And my stockings. Can’t sleep in those.”

  “Sleep?”

  I clamber carefully over his legs, the way you would clamber over a pair of felled trees, and find the edge of the counterpane. “It’s bedtime, Anson, and there’s only one bed. You wouldn’t want me to sleep in that old armchair, would you? Why, my neck’d liketa break, all bent out of shape like that.”

  “But it’s—it’s—”

  “Indecent? Improper?”

  He takes my wrist. “Don’t make me say it.”

  “Say what, Anson? I’ve still got my knickers on, haven’t I? You surely don’t think I mean to seduce you, in your drunken state. I have my standards.”

  At the word seduce, he releases my wrist like you might release a hot cinder from a bonfire. And bonfire: that’s another word, all right, a good word for the temperature underneath this counterpane of elegant blue toile. Anson’s eyes are shut, his hands now folded behind his head in a sort of self-entrapment. My camisole is made of silk and peaches, the brassiere beneath rather less frivolous. I take advantage of my companion’s momentary blindness to remove it. You can imagine the discomfort of a brassiere like that, meant to confine one’s natural bounty into fashionable adolescence. I lean over Anson to drop the old thing off the edge of the bed, and then I grasp his upright shoulders with my two hands.

  “Ginger,” he whispers. Kind of slurry.

  “Now, just you lie down, nice and easy. You need your sleep, after a day like this. Gently does it. That’s the way.”

  He mumbles about how I’m trying to kill him, how we shall both burn in hell or some kind of thing, while I ease him down the pillows into a more or less horizontal predicament. His chest is heavier than I expect, his shoulders like boulders under my hands. I arrange the pillows beneath his head. Reach across him to extinguish the lamp. Ask him how he feels, whether his wound troubles him.

  “I’ll do,” he says.

  I curl myself by his side. Trace his profile with my finger, down his forehead and along the bridge of his nose and that furrow above his lips, I forget what it’s called. All by sight; I can’t see his face. A pure, decent blackness cloaks us both. My camisole is silky against my skin; my breasts fall against the sheets, heavy and warm. The desire I feel for the man before me takes on a mighty power, unbreakable, like the magnetic force binding an atom together, depending not on the angles of his profile or the size of his shoulders or anything to do with his skin and bones and teeth and hair, his luminous eyes or his strong fingers, though I crave each one as you crave water to drink and air to breathe. Just him. The humanity within. That sliver of eternity bearing his name. Whatever it happens to be.

  As I reach his lips, his fingers find mine and hold them in place for a terribly long time. His hot breath travels along my nerves, right bang into my solar plexus. Not a sound escapes us, such that the faint, slow pulse of the ocean actually reaches my ears through the walls of the house. The day’s memories slide past, belonging to another lifetime. I cannot even summon the pity of them. Just the present. Anson and me, touching slightly, singeing each other at a few delicate points. My knees tucked up to his hip. His sternum cradling my elbow. Lips and fingers.

  “He’s my brother,” Anson says. “My baby brother.”

  “It’s a terrible shame.”

  “Practically raised him myself.”

  How satiny his mouth feels. His soft words forming against my thumb.

  “Here’s the thing,” I tell him. “I’m not in love with your baby brother. I’m in love with you. And you’re in love with me, God help you.”

  His head rustles the pillow. Turns toward mine, I think.

  I continue: “And every baby’s got to grow up sometime, doesn’t he? Every baby brother needs to learn that he can’t have a toy just because he wants it.”

  “His heart would break, Ginger. Would break in two.”

  Such a curious thing, lying so close to another human being, breathing his own breath as it leaves his mouth, sharing the heat of his own flesh, and yet you can’t see a thing. The cold darkness blinding you from the sight of his face. Like you are babes tucked inside a single primordial womb, you are alone and naked in the middle of the universe, and there be nothing else existing outside the two of you. Not light nor life. Only truth.

  I drag my hand southward to lie upon his breast.

  “Lord God Almighty,” I whisper. “I do swan, the only hear
t I care about is this one.”

  The heart in question thuds against my palm. The ocean sighs nearby.

  He whispers, “How is it possible you can forgive me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that I forgive you. That’s an awful lot to ask, at the present moment. I just understand, that’s all. I understand you, top to bottom.”

  “Ginger,” he slurs softly, “you are something else.”

  “Aren’t I, though.”

  “You are the berries. The cat’s whiskers.”

  “Why, Oliver Anson Marshall, I do believe you’re sauced.”

  “That’s impossible. Only drank a drop.”

  “Sure you did. Don’t move, now. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “I am already hurt, love. Can’t get any worse.”

  His hands find the supple skin of my waist, under the camisole of silk and peaches. And we kiss.

  16

  I WAKE ONLY once, under the slight gray arrival of dawn. The sight of Anson’s sleeping face takes me by surprise; not because I’ve forgotten he’s there, or what has gone between us during the night, but because it’s the same exact face I recollect from yesterday. Hasn’t altered a bit. He stirs and opens his eyes. We meet as a pair of interested cats, sizing each other’s intentions. “How’s your head?” I ask. “Like murder.”

  “Your ribs?”

  “Worse.”

  “Well, that’s a shame.” I draw myself close. Tuck the counterpane snug around us both. Kiss the meeting of his ribs, above the uppermost edge of the bandage. “Because I am positively berries, myself.”

  17

  I SLEEP ALL the rest of the morning, and when I wake, Anson’s gone. The sheets are cold where he ought to be. Only his scent remains trapped in the pillow, which I gather to my face to block out the brilliance of the sun through the tall French doors facing the ocean.

  But a mere pillow can only comfort a girl for so long, and anyway I am beset with a fierce hunger that has nothing to do with the absent man in my bed and everything to do with the dinner I never ate last night, to say nothing of the breakfast lost from my morning. So I rise from the bed, gathering the counterpane around me, and there on the nightstand, propped against the lamp, is a note that says Ginger in a dear black scrawl. (The remaining bottle of medicinal brandy, I perceive, has not been touched.)