Crooked Hearts

by Patricia Gaffney

  “I love this,” she gasped into the air over his shoulder. “Not just this—I mean you and me, everything—all of it—”

  “Me, too—shut up—”

  “Okay”

  But a little later she turned her head aside to mutter tragically, “Oh, God, Reuben, I don’t want to fall in love with you!”

  Amazed, he saw a tear shining at the corner of her eye. “Would it hurt so much?” He made his voice casual, brushing the tear away with his lips.

  “The end. I might as well kill myself.” He laughed uncertainly. “What would you do if you fell in love with me?”

  The question took him off guard; he said the first thing that came into his head: “Run like hell.”

  She sighed, her soft breath fanning his face. She kissed him as gently as anyone had ever kissed him, and whispered, “Then I hope you never do.”

  He hated this conversation; he wished they’d never started it. He arched up over her and sucked her breast into his mouth almost roughly, while the rhythm of their bodies quickened. She clutched at handfuls of earth on either side, writhing under him and making those soft, incredible sounds he remembered from before. He could make her lose her mind, he exulted, reveling in the illusion of control—until she slipped one hand beneath her own straining thigh, and took hold of his testicles.

  His breath whistled through his teeth. He slowed his strokes, but the power in him mounted higher. “Mmm,” she hummed, caressing him softly, her eyes closed, while he swelled in her hand. He lifted her, wanting her deeper, harder. She yelled; he stopped. But he’d misunderstood; she wanted exactly what he wanted, and she told him so with her urgent hips and her heels pressing against his calves. She cried out all at once, shifting under him until her body made a long, undulating bridge, supported by the flat of her feet and the back of her head. When she climaxed, her strong, rhythmic contractions tightened around him—fast at first, slowing gradually, and he had time to think that a woman was a wondrous thing, God’s finest creation, and this one was the most wondrous of all.

  He let go. Pulsing into her without reserve, he let it be what it was, a free, abandoned, frighteningly natural act of love. What it had in common with the only other time they’d done this was that he wanted it again, immediately. She was like Wing’s drug, he mused as he sank down, joyful and fatalistic, on her breast. Grace was addictive.

  “What does ziskeit mean?” she murmured a few minutes later against his hair.

  “Mmmm. Hard to translate.”

  “Try.”

  “Sweet one. Sweetheart.”

  She sighed dreamily.

  He wanted to tell her something important, something timely. What was it? It flirted at the corners of his mind, dancing away each time he closed in on it. He let it go, too lazy and contented to catch it, and hazily relieved when it was gone.

  When she could move, she kissed his damp temple and ran her fingers through his hair. “Ah, Reuben.” He took it as a tribute and accepted it humbly, whispering, “Ah, Grade,” in the same spirit. But then she said, “What am I going to do without you?” as if she didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t have one, so he didn’t reply.

  The sun had begun to slide toward the mountains by the time they started for home. Home? Just a figure of speech, Reuben told himself; it was what you called wherever you’d been living for a while. You could call a hotel home if you were speaking figuratively. They didn’t hurry, and they stopped often along the way to kiss, or just to hold each other. Grace had a lovely soft blowsiness about her, her skin still flushed, her mouth blurry from kissing. Neither of them had much to say, but the silence wasn’t awkward. He guessed talking about certain things—feelings, stuff like that—wasn’t any easier for her than it was for him.

  They were still a hundred yards from the house when they spied Henry on the front porch. He saw them at the same moment and bounded down the steps, hollering for them to come on, hurry up, he had news. Before they reached him, Reuben thought to say quickly, “Come to my room tonight, Gracie. Hurry—say yes!”

  He’d have dropped her hand, for Henry’s benefit, but she held on. “Yes,” she said immediately, smiling up at him sweetly.

  “Ziskeit,” he whispered.

  Henry was waving a yellow piece of paper. “Telegram!” he shouted, jogging toward them. “He’s in! Doc Slaughter says he’ll do it!”

  “Hot damn!”

  “But only for half the gross,” Henry added, without as much enthusiasm. “That’s his price.”

  “That’s okay with me,” Reuben told him. “He’s the one taking most of the chances.”

  “And if everything works out the way it’s supposed to,” Grace pointed out, “there’ll be plenty for everybody. I say we accept his terms.”

  Henry nodded grudgingly. “He says he’ll start looking for the two rental properties right away, and he expects to meet us in San Francisco by the day after tomorrow.”

  “So soon,” Grace breathed.

  “Are you strong enough for it?” Henry asked Reuben.

  He didn’t look at Grace and she didn’t look at him. “I believe so,” he said gravely.

  Inside the house, Henry said they should drink a toast to celebrate the start of their venture. They clinked glasses of whiskey and drank. “I still say I should be the doctor,” Henry said peevishly. “I did it once before, years ago. I can’t call to mind now exactly why, but I remember I was damn good at it. What do we need an outsider for?”

  Reuben smiled down into his drink, warmed by the notion that Henry considered him an insider. “We need Doc because he is a doctor,” he said reasonably.”Wing’s smart; he’s bound to investigate the setup before he agrees to anything.”

  “Besides,” Grace chimed in, “you haven’t seen him, Henry, you don’t know how perfect he is. He looks like an M.D. you could corrupt, because that’s exactly what he is.”

  “Hmpf,” grumped Henry, not consoled. “Who the hell am I, then?”

  “You’re the mastermind,” she said diplomatically. “You’re taking a big enough risk as it is just by showing your face in the city. If anybody recognizes you, we’re dead.”

  Ah You poked his head in the door. To announce dinner, Reuben thought, but instead he rubbed his spidery hands together and said, “I go too—I be messenger! Right, boss?”

  Henry flopped down in his chair, taking the bottle with him. “That ties it,” he groused. “Now everybody’s got a job but me.”

  18

  The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.

  —Thomas Paine

  “PERFECT.”

  Reuben stood on the cracked sidewalk, looking across Balance Street at a small, shabby, two-story office building with a shiny new sign. “J. Hayes, M.D.,” read the shingle, “The Painless Doctor.” The building sat between a grog shop and a Salvation Army meeting hall.

  “Perfect,” he reiterated. “How did you get it set up so fast?”

  Doc Slaughter stepped on the half-inch butt of his last cigarette and felt in his pocket for a new one. “I had all my old equipment, never threw it away. It only took a couple of hours to move everything in.” He pointed up at a dirty second-floor window. “I slept upstairs last night.”

  “How was it?”

  “Noisy.”

  Reuben grunted. It was a rough neighborhood. “Have you gotten any patients yet?” he asked, half joking.

  “Not yet.”

  “What’ll you do if one walks in?”

  Doc gave him one of his day-old cadaver looks. “Treat him.”

  They strolled up to Pacific Street and turned left. It was a typical summer day in the city, chilly, nasty, and damp. Everything had a vague but grim familiarity to Reuben, who was pretty sure he’d gotten lost in the fog with Grace on these same seedy streets not very long ago. Doc asked him if he wanted to see the empty warehouse he’d leased on the Embarcadero; Reuben said it wasn’t necessary, and asked how much the
rent was.

  “Twenty dollars a month. I had to take it for six months, minimum, and they wanted forty dollars up front.”

  “Crooks,” Reuben said automatically. “I can’t stand throwing money away for nothing.”

  “But it’s necessary. Wing has to believe we’ve got a legitimate place to store his drugs, however temporarily. Without that, he’s not going to hand over thousands of dollars to us, no matter how impressive he finds my papers.”

  Reuben had already seen Doc’s papers. Masterpieces, as usual; the doctor was a true artist. “And as soon as he hands over the money, we disappear.”

  “Sounds simple,” Doc agreed cautiously. “But what if he hands it over in the form of a check?”

  “He won’t. He knows he can’t be connected to the transaction in any way. You’ll open a bank account, and he’ll hand over cash to purchase the stuff. He’ll want you to write a check to the supplier in Turkey, or wherever the opium comes from.”

  “Mm.”

  “But instead, you’ll fade away into the wide white-devil world, never to be seen again.”

  Doc’s dour face brightened. “With half the gross,” he said cheerfully.

  The Claymont Hotel wasn’t the Palace, but it was clean and quiet, and Grace thought it had a sleek, dark, European atmosphere that added class. She walked into Henry’s room, which connected to hers, and started with the same mild shock she felt whenever she came upon him suddenly. She just couldn’t get over it. All he’d done was shave off his mustache and the hair on top of his head, and put on horn-rimmed spectacles. But the transformation was astonishing. “You look like an intelligent newborn baby,” she told him this time; this morning it had been “a sexy monk who illuminates manuscripts.”

  He preened at the praise, looking up at her from the book he was reading beside the window. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this a long time ago. Think of the opportunities we’ve been wasting.”

  She sat down on the end of his bed. “It’s not that good,” she said dampeningly, “so don’t start getting ideas. I’d recognize you after a long second glance, and so would anyone else who knew you well. Is Reuben back?” she asked before he could start arguing.

  “Not yet. He should be—aha.” They both turned at the sound of a key in the lock. The door opened and Reuben strode in.

  Not being allowed to do what she wanted to do—rush over, throw her arms around him, and kiss him—added an illicit thrill to an affair that was already so intensely exciting to her she could hardly stand it. Not that her reticence was fooling anybody; she suspected Henry knew everything, and Ah You undoubtedly knew even more. But hiding her passion for Reuben in public seemed like the respectable thing to do.

  That was just a guess, of course, respectability being a somewhat shadowy and irrelevant concept in the life she’d led up to now. More than once lately she’d caught herself thinking of Lucille Waters, and wondering how she managed to project her elegant, ladylike image so flawlessly even though she’d been sleeping with Henry, Grace knew for a fact, for years. It must be something you were born with—or not. Did she herself have that quality? She didn’t know. She worried that even if she did have it, she’d throw it away if Reuben wanted her to. She’d stand on her head if he wanted her to.

  “Hi,” he said casually, but the hot, private look he sent her made her toes curl. “Ah You’s not back yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Henry, throwing his book aside and getting up. “How did it go with the doctor?”

  “Fine, everything’s set on his end. You should see the office; it’s unbelievably seedy, a real work of art. He’s got the warehouse, too, and all the paperwork’s done. There’s nothing to do now but wait.”

  Grace stood up, walked to the window, and came back.

  “She’s been doing that all morning,” Henry confided in a stage whisper.

  “Why?”

  Their nonchalance bewildered her. “Because somebody’s got to worry about all the things that might go wrong!” she burst out. “You two—oh, what’s the use.” She threw up her hands and resumed pacing.

  “I wish you’d relax,” Henry said, maddeningly patient. “This Wing character’s no different from any pigeon we’ve ever plucked. Greed motivates him, and it’ll blind him, same as it blinds all of ’em, to the flaws in the scheme. If there are any, which there aren’t.”

  “Besides,” Reuben added, “we’ll distract him from the dubious here and now by giving him a vision of the future. Which we paint as so rosy and full of profit, he won’t see the one-time dodge going on right under his nose. Think of it as a mental thimble trick, Gus.”

  “That’s it.” Henry nodded approvingly.

  Their confidence didn’t reassure her, it only alarmed her. “What if you’re both wrong? What if he cheats us as easily as he did the last time? What if he kills us?”

  “First of all,” Reuben argued, with a touch of Henry’s irritating patience, “there is no ‘us.’ Doc and I talk to him; you and Henry stay right here. You in particular, Grace, don’t go anywhere near him.”

  “Right,” said Henry.

  “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’ll want me in on it. I told you, he’s got a yen for me.”

  “Well, he’ll have to get over it.” Reuben sounded casual, but she knew it was an act; he’d have said more if they’d been alone, but he hid his steely hatred of Wing from Henry to protect her. Sometimes she wondered what Henry would do if he knew the whole truth about what had happened that night at Wing’s house.

  “What keeps him from killing you?” she persisted.

  Reuben grinned. “My lightning-quick wits.”

  She couldn’t smile back. She couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d looked lying in the Chinatown alley, white-faced and bleeding. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it. Besides everything else, even if we get the money and get away, who’s to say he won’t find us someday and then kill us? You say he won’t leave Chinatown, but how can you be sure? He had his hatchet men rob an armed stagecoach in broad daylight, he—”

  “That was an aberration,” Reuben insisted. “The man’s got a screw loose when it comes to death, Grace—he had to have those funeral sculptures.”

  “Well, now he has to have me.” She turned her back on him, embarrassed by her distress. She wasn’t a worrier by nature, but memories of Wing’s depravity kept gnawing at her peace of mind, robbing her of the ability to see anything amusing or entertaining about this swindle. She had never let Reuben see how frightened she was, though, and she hated herself for starting now.

  “Hey, Gracie,” he said softly, coming up behind her. He caressed the back of her neck, and she dropped her head. “It’s going to work perfectly. Trust me, honey, we’re going to live happily ever after.”

  She dredged up a nod and a smile. “I know. I’m fine, really.” But along with everything else, she was nearly sick from the fear that his idea of happily ever after had nothing in common with hers.

  Another knock sounded at the door. When Henry opened it, Ah You came in, carrying a bundle of clean laundry—his entree into the conservative Claymont Hotel’s private guest rooms.

  “Did you see him?” Henry demanded before he could get the door closed. “Did they let you in? Did anybody follow you?”

  “Nobody follow. I see number one lieutenant, Tom Fun.”

  “Buddy Tom!” Reuben said jovially. “How’s his butt?”

  Grace didn’t laugh. “What did he say?”

  “He say Kai Yee meet you tomorrow night at Red Duck Tavern on Clay Street.”

  Reuben let out a whoop and smacked a grinning Henry on the shoulder.

  “And more good news. I go home the long way, visit my cousin who unload the big ships in Gum San Ta Foy harbor. Big clipper ship in the Bay today, come last week, call Star of India. Cargo in a warehouse now, but owner not allowed to take because of new raw.” He shook himself. “New law. Guess who is owner, and what is c
argo he not allowed to take.”

  “Great Scot,” said Henry.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” sighed Grace.

  “It’s a miracle,” breathed Reuben. “He’s stuck! He’ll think we’re his saviors, he’ll pay us anything we ask!”

  “Is the cargo paid for yet,” Grace asked, “or only on order?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Can you find that out? And also how much it’s worth?”

  “It may be so.”

  “A celebration,” Henry decided, opening his nightstand drawer and removing a pint bottle.

  Ah You cleared his throat uncomfortably. “That good news. Now bad.” Henry turned around, bottle in hand; Reuben’s smile faded. “Kai Yee say Missy Grace have to come to meeting too, or no deal.”

  She sank down in Henry’s chair. “I told you,” she whispered, stricken. “I knew it.”

  Gray dawn crept past the edges of the window, pearling the dark shapes of bureau and chairs and coffin-shaped wardrobe. Grace sat up slowly, careful not to wake Reuben. He lay beside her in the big bed on his stomach, one leg drawn up, arms outflung as if he’d dropped there from a height, exhausted. Which he had, pretty much. She touched her fingertips to his forearm, gently riffling the soft brown hairs. His face in the dimness was pale but distinct, his profile clear-cut against the blue-white of the pillow. His long, hard body at rest fascinated her—so foreign, so other, and yet she could reach out and touch him, bring him to life with a caress if she chose to. Who are you? she wondered in silence, resisting the urge to wake him up, make him … more real.

  Yawning, she looked around his hotel room, reflecting on how little it had in common with the room they’d shared at the Bunyon Arms. No torn paper shades at the Claymont: discreet draperies covered the old-fashioned casement window, and the bed was wide, soft, and voluptuous; instead of a gritty wood floor, a thick woolen carpet stretched from wall to wall. But in a year, ten years, fifty if she lived that long, it was the sordid details of the Bunyon Arms, she knew for a certainty, that would still be etched like acid in her memory. Even now she couldn’t think of that unforgettable night with Reuben without a moment when her heart stopped beating, overcome with memories of passion, and acute embarrassment, and finally a simple, aching sweetness.