Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  Tillie did not hesitate. She quickly grabbed her reticule, containing the silver slotted spoon and the vial of oil, plus the copy of Dracula. In her sleeve was the little notebook and pencil. She descended the stairs and unlocked the front door, which opened noiselessly. At the front gate, she unstopped the vial of oil and poured a few drops onto the hinges. They opened with only the faintest groan. She lowered the catch as noiselessly as she could and walked south as rapidly as her feet could take her.

  She passed Henry Gurdon Marquand’s mansion, the one with the reportedly Byzantine chamber, thence westward to the looming darkness of Central Park. As she emerged onto Fifth Avenue, she crossed the darkened street and stood in the shadows of the park, oak and maples rising above her. A block away lurked the enormous French chateau–style mansion of Mrs. Astor. To the north, she could vaguely see the Lenox Library, where she had spent hours and hours perusing the art gallery and rare books.

  Tall, T-shaped Edison arc lamps lit the street every 150 feet, dousing a circle of yellow onto the sidewalks.

  She had done it. She had left her home in secret to meet a boy in secret, and her heart was full to bursting from the excitement of it all. Tillie looked downtown and saw a figure walking on the park side of the street toward her.

  Was it Ian? Of course it must be. But it occurred to her that she was unaccompanied, and the area was deserted. If someone were to attack her, she could easily be dragged into the darkened recesses of the park to be murdered, just like Lucy. What could she bargain for her life? She had not brought any money. All she had was the book, and whose life was worth a silly book?

  The figure seemed wide at the shoulders, hunched over as if trying not to be noticed. If it were Ian, he would make himself known. Right now. He would say something. But the stranger was silent.

  “I should go home,” she murmured and began to walk away as the figure drew closer. She stepped off the curb and started to cross Fifth Avenue. If she ran, she could make her front gates in five minutes. If she shouted, perhaps John would hear her before she reached home.

  The figure under the light straightened at her movement and began rapidly walking toward her.

  This was a terrible idea. Tillie had started to run when a voice called out to her.

  “Wait!”

  She stopped and turned. The man stepped under one of the streetlights.

  “Ian? Is that you?”

  “Yes. Who else did you think it was? One of the Dead Rabbits?”

  “One of the Five Points gangs? They don’t exist anymore, do they?”

  “Probably not. Anyway, this neighborhood is a little too nice for their taste.” He joined her in the middle of Fifth Avenue and smiled. “Boy, your streets up here are so clean. Nary a rat in sight. How’s your broken arm?”

  “Collarbone. It’s mending, but it still hurts.” Tillie shook away her fright and inhaled some courage. She reached into her reticule and removed the book. “Why do you want to read this?” She shook the copy of Dracula. “And why do you keep asking about my sister? Why do you care?”

  “Why did you insist I meet you at midnight, when I ought to be getting my beauty sleep? You look sleepy yourself.”

  She did? Now that she thought of it, she did feel a little foggy. She always did when the medicine first took effect. “Never mind that. Answer my question.”

  “And talking kind of slowly too. Are you all right?” He squinted, trying to study her face.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. The book. My sister, Lucy. Speak.”

  Ian put his hands deep in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “It’s a good book, I hear. But with the news about a killing, I had to know if there was something real happening, not just the coroner’s imagination. It’s not every day that you find out a girl died from being bled to death.”

  Tillie shivered. “Lucy was a real person, not some curio in a cabinet to be examined.” She’d been silly to think this boy was someone she could talk to. “Here. Take the book. But after two weeks, I’d like to keep it. You won’t need to pay me back. I can’t do this again.”

  “Meeting men you hardly know, in the dead of night? I suspect you kind of enjoy it.”

  “Oh, stop it, will you? Why do you care about my sister?” she repeated.

  Ian lifted his chin and looked at Tillie in a disconcerting way. Like he was studying her so he could draw her portrait from memory later. He shuffled his feet a little sheepishly.

  “I had a brother who died when he was a baby. Murdered by the lady who was supposed to be watching him while my mother and I worked during the daytime.”

  “Oh!” Had she even given any thought to what his life was like? “That’s so terrible! What happened?”

  “She doped him up because he was crying too much. He was starting to develop the croup, and I kept telling her he was crying for a reason, but she was too annoyed to care.” He frowned. “My parents died soon after that.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “You’re lucky to have a family. Even without your sister.”

  Tillie said nothing to that. He was right, but why didn’t she feel lucky? “What were they like? Your parents?” she asked.

  “When we lived in the shtetl in Russia, my mother sold bread, and my father taught at the heder. They were both so smart. So tough, you know? When the pogroms started, they fled to the port at Hamburg. For me. To save me. I still remember being crammed into steerage on the ship. And the stench—and the rotten food.” His eyes were unfocused. “They found us a room to stay in when we got to New York, and my mother gave birth to my brother. And then one year later, everyone was dead. They made it here, and they died anyway.” He wiped his sleeve against his nose.

  “I guess they did save you, after all.”

  Ian allowed a fleeting smile. “I guess they did.”

  “So . . .” Tillie was wringing her hands around the book. She stopped before she tore the pages. “Here.” She handed it to him. “So you want to help.”

  “I do. I know people.”

  “Who? Do you work with the police?” she asked.

  “No. I sell papers, but I also run errands for the staff, and I help them with their stories sometimes. I have access to the old papers at the World, and sometimes at the Tribune, so we can look for patterns. And I know someone who works for the coroner. Not very nice, but he knows things that the police don’t.”

  Tillie regarded him. “Really? These people would help?”

  “They might.” Ian pulled a slightly bent cigarette from his pocket and lit it. The spark illuminated his face, and for a brief moment, he looked almost like a child, with those big eyes of his. “So tell the truth. Why midnight, of all times?” For the first time, she noticed he seemed tired. “In four hours, I have to go buy my papers to sell. That doesn’t leave much time for sleeping.”

  Tillie sighed. “I’m sorry. I had to leave in secret. My family won’t let me out after what happened to Lucy. They’ve hired a watchman to patrol our house. My grandmother won’t allow you to visit. And I had to return the book. I promised.”

  “Princess locked in a castle, eh?” He puffed on his cigarette, and the smoke obscured his eyes. He was still smiling, but it was unlike the smiles she encountered from eligible men when she entered a ballroom. Those were expressions that minutely examined her flaws, quantified her, as if she were a piece of silver to be doled out and hoarded. This smile had the curious effect of making her want to smile, too, though nothing funny had been said. It was as if she’d been wanting such a smile all week long.

  “I suppose. After what happened to Lucy, can you blame them for being extra cautious?”

  “Of course not.” His smile faded. “Look. I would like to help. I know what it’s like to lose family. It hurts more than a cannon shot.”

  Tillie considered the earnestness in his face. He might quiet the questions that had been flooding her mind since Lucy’s death. The why, and why her. Tillie had never truly suffered from want or hunger
in her life. But this was a dark, deep hole that begged to be filled with reason and facts.

  “All right,” she said lightly. “Thank you. And how can I pay you back?”

  “Oh, maybe buy me a dinner at Delmonico’s. I hear their steak is the best.” Ian grinned again—the real thing, no paste jewels. He crushed the stub of his cigarette under his old boot. “So—have you heard anything about who might have done it?”

  “No. Mama and Grandmama spoke to the police, and they’ve learned nothing. Or at least, they don’t tell me anything.” She lowered her voice. “I think they want to forget it ever happened.”

  “How could they?” He sounded angry. “You can’t forget that. She was slaughtered.”

  Tillie’s throat went dry. That word—slaughtered—made her think of abattoirs and blood flowing along gutters after steer met knives and their grisly ends. Against her will, she imagined Lucy fighting some unseen foe. Fighting and failing to save herself.

  “You don’t have to remind me.” Tillie poked at the copy of Dracula in Ian’s hands. “Which is why I bought this. I’ve thought about how someone could have done this to her.”

  “Me too. It seems a strange coincidence that this book comes out this year, and your sister dies just like a vampire victim. Same name too. There must be a connection.”

  “Oh!” She reached into her bag again. “Here’s your spoon.” She handed him the silverware with its patterned fenestrations. “Though I still haven’t figured out what use it has. Unless it’s for embarrassing oneself while eating lemon sorbet.”

  “It’s not for sorbet.” He laughed. “You don’t know? Well, I’ll show you. Do you have to go back home right away?”

  Did she? Time seemed to expand for a second, breaching the impossible. Freedom seemed to swell in her chest as she smiled.

  “No,” Tillie said. “Not right away.”

  They began walking down Fifth Avenue, from one pool of lamplight to the next. Ian had a habit of rubbing his chin as he was thinking. Tillie kept pace with him, talking.

  “My friend Hazel said the papers reported vampire killings in New England.”

  “Is that so? We should find those articles and see what they say.”

  “Can you do that? The Lenox Library might have some, but I haven’t been able to visit.”

  “We should go to Newspaper Row, downtown, so we can search the old articles, like I mentioned.”

  Tillie’s face lit up. “I would love that. I need to do something.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “I’ve been writing some notes,” she said timidly and took out her little notebook. “Just some scribbles.”

  Ian flipped through the leaflets. “You’re asking good questions. Like a reporter! Why would vampires need blood and not flesh? Maybe there’s a medical illness that makes people need blood. We may need to speak to a doctor about such things. And the bite. We could talk to that fellow at the morgue too. But there are other questions you’re missing.”

  “What questions?” Tillie asked.

  “Well, what happened the day your sister died? Who was she with?”

  Tillie handed her pencil to Ian. “Her maid, Betty. But the maid was fired,” Tillie said.

  Ian nibbled his lip and kept writing and walking. “Has anyone spoken to Betty?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “There’s a place to start,” Ian said, brightening.

  “Oh, and the doctor’s son. He mentioned that he saw her that same day, and she seemed off. I’ve been meaning to go back and speak with him. And Dr. Erikkson. Luckily, I have an appointment coming up,” she said, moving her arm in the sling and wincing.

  “Perfect.”

  “There’s another thing.” Tillie’s face clouded. “Dorothy—she’s another friend—she says that Lucy and her fiancé, James, were fighting a lot recently. But I had no idea.”

  Ian rubbed his chin. “Well, you could ask James, but if he’s a suspect, there’s no way he’ll admit anything was less than a peach between them.”

  “It’s unlikely that James is a vampire—he’s always out in the daylight, for one thing.” She stood looking southward, where a tall, square building on the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue stuck above the rest like a tooth. “He’s been kind to me lately. He never paid attention before.”

  “Is he sad?”

  “Sad?” Tillie stopped walking for a moment. James was like her mother and grandmother—he never displayed much emotion. “Well, I suppose, but . . .”

  “No. I mean, if my wife—my fiancée—if she died, I’d be pretty torn up. Love of my life, dead?”

  “I don’t know if they were the loves of each other’s lives.” When Ian stared at her, she added, “It was a good match. They were fond of each other.”

  He snorted. “I’m fond of my fishmonger, but I’m not going to marry him. I guess that’s love on Millionaire’s Row, eh?”

  Tillie went hot in the face. “I loved my sister.”

  “Sure, and I believe it. But how well did you know her?”

  This silenced her. They’d been so close, and yet . . . of late, she’d spent most outings hiding in her hosts’ libraries, instead of in the ballrooms where James and Lucy were. It meant that she’d lost opportunities to spend time with her sister. How selfish of her.

  “I thought I knew her well,” Tillie said faintly. “But . . .” She thought of the locked drawer in Lucy’s room. She turned to her midnight companion. “Ian. Can you teach me how to pick a lock?”

  “Do I look like a thief?”

  Tillie’s eyes traveled up and down his impossibly shabby clothes. Ian followed her gaze to his boots, which had holes in the toes.

  “Don’t answer that,” he said. “I’m not a thief, and I don’t know the first thing about how to pick a lock. But”—he grinned—“I know someone who does.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Remember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.

  —Van Helsing

  They walked eastward toward the elevated train on Third Avenue. Tillie was surprised that it still ran so late. Past sunset, she occasionally went to the Grand Opera House with her mother and Lucy, but never anywhere by herself. And always by carriage. She didn’t know the first thing about navigating the city under this umbrella of sooty darkness.

  “The city is so quiet now,” she said as they walked. Most of the homes on either side of Sixty-Third Street were beautifully kept. Some Italianate, some French chateau–style, but all smaller and less grand than the ones on Fifth and Madison. By the time they reached Lexington, a large synagogue had appeared on the southeast corner.

  “I used to go to that shul,” Ian pointed out.

  “Oh,” Tillie said. “Why don’t you go anymore?”

  “I’m busy. And I had some problems with . . . never mind.”

  “With whom?”

  “Not a person. Everything.” He gestured to include the darkened sky above them.

  “I see.” She didn’t, but she was embarrassed to ask. Church was for her a duty, similar to dressing as a Pembroke lady ought or dabbing her napkin at the edges of her mouth just so. God was supposedly in charge, but nothing had ever stirred within Tillie that spoke of a grandly written plan laced into her being. The two items indelibly written into her destiny were these: never being quite as wonderful as Lucy and never knowing quite as much as she wished. If anything, he watched her, and occasionally he laughed. But mostly, he provided and thence ignored her. Tillie knew he ignored others with heavier neglect, and this troubled her. Who was to carry the burden, when even Providence fell short of the wretched?

  She wondered if that was how her sister had felt, why she’d volunteered at the Foundling Hospital.

  Ian fell into silence, perhaps thinking over his apostasy. Or perhaps thinking of food. Tillie was hungry, and heard Ian’s own stomach rumble as if they shared kindred organs.

  Ahead, they could see the T
hird Avenue el cutting across the space above the streets. On metal legs, the tracks ran parallel to the ground and formed a dark, looming stripe up above them. They climbed the stairs and paid the fare, waiting for the groan and belching steam hiss that told them the train was nearing the station.

  “Nighttime escapes agree with you,” Ian said once they’d boarded. “You really perked up.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. You seemed really sleepy before. You talked too slow.”

  “Oh.” It was probably her medicine wearing off. She hadn’t realized she seemed slow. She felt rather normal on it. Strange. She watched the buildings fly past just a few feet away. “Imagine waking up to seeing a train outside your chamber window,” Tillie said, peering.

  “I don’t have to imagine. The last place I lived, I woke up to that every day. I could reach out my window and spit into a train window, if I wanted.”

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Like death,” he said.

  They said nothing more until they exited on Grand Street and headed down Bowery Street. Unlike sleepy uptown, the Bowery was pulsing with the living. Two parallel elevated trains flanked the street, and storefronts were lit everywhere. Roughs, thieves (probably), women, even children were clustered and scattered here and there amongst the shabby shooting galleries, shops, lottery offices, hotels, saloons, and dance houses crammed on each street.

  “Stay close to me,” Ian murmured. “Hold your purse in your hand, on my side.”

  They passed a noisy gambling house, with alternating yelps and peals of laughter pouring forth from the smoke-filled venue. One or two storefronts were hung with red banners containing Chinese writing; inside, on low settees, customers smoked and drank from small cups as they watched the street, eyes heavily lidded. Patrons chatted outside a concert saloon, while inside, music, tinny and distant, accompanied the thumping of feet.

  And it stank! The streets here were not clean like those uptown. Piles of refuse obscured and blurred the edge of the sidewalk, and horse manure formed small dark mountains on the cobblestones. The miasma hit her nostrils and nearly made Tillie retch. A few men bumped her as they passed, which jostled her against Ian. She took a sharp inhalation of breath with every jolt.