Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  “Wait here,” he said, pausing in the back room. “I’m going to tell Tobias we’re here so he doesn’t get nervous and shout for the roundsman.”

  Tillie nodded. Ian disappeared down a corridor, and she heard his footsteps going up stairs above her. She nibbled an errant cuticle, and her stomach rumbled again. Her mending bone ached something terrible, and the discomfort infected and occupied other places in her body. She ravaged her cuticles, trying to ignore the pain elsewhere. Two of her fingers were oozing blood now. She glanced toward the store. Ian was still upstairs. There was time.

  Tillie raced back along the grocery aisles, found the nearest bottle of laudanum, and tore it out of its paper packaging. She threw her head back and sucked down a dropperful of pungent brown liquid. Just enough to keep the pain at bay and keep her spirits up. She screwed the cap back on, replaced it in the box, and placed the damaged box behind the others on the shelf. Tobias would perhaps think it was just a mouse that had broken the paper on the package.

  She tiptoed back to the office, just as Ian showed up.

  “Let’s start,” he said, beaming, before sniffing the air. “What’s that smell?”

  She shrugged, keeping her mouth shut. He led her to the bureau in Tobias’s office.

  “I’m not an expert at lock picking, but I think what you need is a lot of practice. Here you go.”

  Tillie had brought the tiny, bent iron rods with her. First, she tried the same locked bureau drawer. It took five tries, fewer than her first attempt, before she could open it. Tobias had two other locks to work on: a chunky, rusted padlock and a medium-size wooden chest. Tillie worked at them, under Ian’s guidance, until she was able to open them reasonably well.

  “I feel better,” she said. About the lock picking and about her body, which was now quelled of its discomfort. She realized that she spent most of her unmedicated hours feeling like there was a key stuck in her back, one that had wound and wound her insides into a knot of wretched tightness. The medicine made everything untwist and open. It made her feel normal.

  “You’re ready to start your felonious career,” Ian announced. “Now to find out what that drawer holds. Let’s get it now!”

  “It’s the middle of the night!” Tillie protested.

  “And we’re already up.”

  “But what if someone catches you?”

  “They won’t, not with you showing me around. We can compare notes about what Mrs. Weber said along the way.”

  “Well, all right,” she relented. “I guess I can only unlock things when you’re around anyway.”

  “And we’ll bring all of my cousin’s tools. And I can return them right away. You’ll have better luck,” Ian added.

  Tillie began to walk back to the elevated station, and Ian trailed behind her. The night was still so very much alive. Even with the backdrop of darkness, she felt like the world was more vivid than a cloudless noon day. The electric lights illuminated the saloons and corner taverns, but much was still very hidden.

  “Come on,” Ian said. “Let’s go unlock some secrets. You and me.”

  Tillie paused and inhaled the warm city air. The fetid stink of the manure-encrusted sidewalk did not bother her, nor did the sight of a man in a top hat jovially dancing with a woman—clearly a man dressed as a female, with broad shoulders and a touch of chest hair peeking out above the ill-fitting bodice—inside the doorway of a dance hall.

  Alive. The world was smelly and dirty. It oozed about her, and yet Tillie felt more alive in it than she had been in her perfumed, waxed, and gilded life. There were safe ways to do things, and then there was this.

  She grinned at Ian. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!

  —Count Dracula

  Though the quickest way to get home was the elevated train, they decided to walk. Tillie repeatedly fell behind Ian, dawdling to peek inside the speakeasies and saloons of the Lower East Side or to inhale the lemon, mint, and garlic that lingered outside a closed Syrian restaurant. Finally, Ian gave in, stopping to look with her. He showed her his favorite Yiddish theaters and spoke in volumes about Jacob Adler, the king of the Jewish Rialto, who had played a stunning King Lear years ago when Ian was a boy.

  “I’ve never been to the theater down here,” Tillie confessed. “I’ve been to Weber and Fields and the Knickerbocker and of course the Opera House, and to Sherry’s afterward for lobster, but not here.”

  “Oh,” Ian said, wincing. “No lobster for me.”

  “Oh. Because it’s forbidden?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “I don’t follow the rules—haven’t for a long time. But some old ways stick. Food is home.” He shrugged. “Also, lobsters look like monsters. Have you ever looked a live lobster in the eye?”

  “No!” Tillie laughed. They were now at Twenty-Third Street. “But I do know that they’re arthropods, which means they’re related to millipedes and scorpions. They have three sets of claws, did you know? Not just those two big ones. And they have blue blood! The blood has copper, not iron, which is why those copper roofs over on Fourteenth Street look bluish green, instead of, well, copper colored—”

  “How do you know all this?” Ian asked.

  “I read,” Tillie said simply. “And I read my dictionary a lot. I have Chandler’s Encyclopedia, but it’s not as detailed as I would like.”

  “You should go to college,” Ian said.

  “My family would absolutely forbid it. They won’t think I need a university or college degree when I’m just going to get married and take care of my house and children and husband.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you going to college?” Tillie asked.

  “No. No money. I’m learning by doing.”

  “Learning how to sell newspapers? How much more schooling do you need to do that?”

  “Hey, I learn something new every day. I like helping in the office. And someday, I won’t be on the street all the time. So. Do you like eating lobster?”

  “Yes. I eat loads of it!”

  “Someday I’ll take you to my favorite knish shop. The chopped liver one is unbelievable.”

  Tillie smiled. “Are they open in the middle of the night?”

  “Probably not. Maybe you could come some other time.”

  None of this world was open to her during the day. “Let’s keep walking,” she said, even though they had never stopped.

  They were silent all the way up to the Tenderloin district, with its theaters blazing in electric lights and lobster palaces catering their pricey three-dollar meals to the wealthy. Even though it was past three in the morning, theatergoers were still in the restaurants drinking and carousing loudly. But those weren’t the only pleasures here. At Seventy-Second Street, Tillie dragged Ian inside the park to Bethesda Terrace, complete with carved stairs and the beautiful bronze angel statue in the center of the fountain.

  Tonight, this statue and this fountain—and all of Central Park—felt like they belonged to her. She stretched her arms wide open, which was not terribly wide, as her arm was so weak and stiff.

  “You look like you could fly yourself,” Ian said.

  Tillie dropped her arms but did not look at him. “In my head, I can fly. Higher than you could ever imagine.”

  Tillie’s feet were blistering. She hobbled the last few blocks home and accepted Ian’s arm to lean upon. Her ache for more medicine was deepening; even so, it was wonderful to have an excuse to be so close. There was a lot you could learn from just a small amount of physical contact with another person. Ian’s arm was steady and wiry; occasionally he would touch her arm with his other hand to make sure she was okay. He never touched her long enough to arouse suspicion that he was taking advantage. And yet, he seemed to lean into her as well. Just the slightest pressure of his shoulder against hers. Perhaps it was an acknowledgment that he, too, enjoyed the closeness.

  The Pembroke home was still dark, but th
e night sky had diluted just a little, a sign that dawn was soon to come. Somewhere on their grounds, John O’Toole patrolled the house. Tillie checked her brooch watch; it was getting close to five o’clock. Ada would have trysted with John two hours ago. They would have to watch him round the house, then run inside before he saw them again. Tillie pulled Ian behind the corner of a brick fence one house away.

  “What are we doing?” he whispered.

  “We have to slip in so our guard doesn’t see us. My grandmother hired John after Lucy died.”

  “They should get a discount, since he’s not watching you.”

  Tillie pinched Ian, and he wordlessly mouthed, “Ouch!” She grinned.

  As expected, John slowly circled the front of the house. He paused at the gate to look up and down the street. Ian and Tillie pulled their faces back just in time. They saw him disappear around the west side of the house.

  “Let’s go!”

  Tillie ground her teeth together to eclipse the pain of her blistered feet, and they galloped to the front gate. They closed it as soundlessly as possible and ran up the stairs to the front door.

  It was locked.

  “I left this unlocked!” Tillie said, gasping.

  “Now what?”

  “To the back. We’ll follow around, and John won’t see us go through the kitchen entrance, by the conservatory.”

  They spun around to head down the front marble steps, when they froze at the sight of a calm John O’Toole pointing a pistol at them from the bottom of the stairs.

  “John!” Tillie squeaked.

  John pivoted to point the barrel straight at Ian’s chest. Ian raised his hands and took a step sideways away from Tillie. Even in the gloom, she could see John frowning.

  “Miss Pembroke! What are you doing out here?” To Ian, he barked, “Who’re you?”

  “John,” Tillie said. “Please put your pistol down. This is Ian Metzger. He’s a friend.”

  At the word friend, John raised his eyebrows high. “And what are you doing with ’im, all hours of the night?”

  “He’s helping me, ah, ah, fix something. Upstairs.” Oh, it sounded awful. “It can’t take longer than ten minutes.” Ian cleared his throat and looked just as guilty. “Please. It’s not what you think. You can’t tell my mother about this. You cannot.”

  “I can, and I will. Your grandmother will want to know.”

  Ian looked at Tillie. He had far less to lose here. All he needed to do was leave, and that would be that. Tillie needed to get that drawer unlocked. It might be the only thing that helped her find out what had happened in Lucy’s last hours. It could tell her everything she wanted to know—and everything she didn’t.

  “One hour. Just let him in for one hour. If you say nothing of this, then I’ll promise to say nothing of Ada riding you like a horse in the middle of the night, when I snuck out and you were supposedly watching the house.”

  John dropped the arm holding the pistol. His jaw clenched. Ian covered his mouth, but he failed to squelch down a tiny “Oho!”

  “Look,” Tillie said. “If someone else catches Ian in the house, I will take the blame, not you. I’ll say it was all my doing. Your job is to keep an eye on strangers, not police me.”

  John’s brown eyes went from Tillie to Ian and back to Tillie. “One hour. Be quick. If I get so much as an inkling that he’s hurt you”—he waved his pistol at Ian—“I will crush his skull like a peanut shell, and I will have the law and your grandmother on my side. Understood?”

  Tillie and Ian chimed simultaneously, “Understood.”

  John moved up the stairs to unlock the front door, and inside they went.

  This time, it was Ian’s turn to drop his jaw. For the first time, Tillie saw her home through his eyes—the tall palm plants rising majestically, the six-foot portrait of her grandmother in the entranceway, the gilt-painted crown moldings and velvet-covered chairs. Chinese vases stood stuffed with peacock feathers and hothouse flowers that would be replenished with fresh roses in a few hours. Statuettes of marble and bronze lurked in every corner, beneath oil paintings by Pietro Perugino, Jacopo Bellini, and Lorenzo Lotto. None of those ridiculous “new” painters found in the Metropolitan, like Manet and Pissarro. The masters were the only ones worth having in one’s home.

  “Wow” was all that Ian could say. An embossed Bible with gilt-edged paper seemed to judge them from its place on a three-footed table ordered from France, in the style of those found in the salons of Faubourg Saint-Germain. Ian reached out to touch the gilded cover but then withdrew his hand as if in fear. “Wow,” he said again. “You really live here.”

  “I do. It’s a beautiful prison,” she said.

  Ian looked at her, noticing how bitterly she glanced around at the opulence. “Did Lucy feel the same way?”

  “I don’t know. She was going to get married, and she seemed happy. She would have been the mistress of something like this, all her own.”

  “Trading one prison for another?” Ian asked.

  Tillie sighed. “She never told me she was unhappy.”

  Now that she thought of it, all Lucy ever did was put her energy into making others feel better. Tillie would slouch at the dinner table under the weight of her grandmother’s criticisms, and Lucy would suddenly launch into some gossip about an opulent gazebo being built by someone or other, or a million dollars’ worth of jewels being flown in from France for a wedding gift. Lucy was brilliant at launching glittering distractions. Later, she would whisper, “I love my smart Tillie. You keep reading. I’ll keep Grandmama at bay. Someday, the world will catch up to your brilliance.”

  “Everyone loves you,” Tillie had said once. “Even your sneezes are perfect.”

  “Never mind my sneezes. And I’m not perfect.” Lucy’s smile had faltered. What had she meant? But Tillie hadn’t asked. She’d never really probed to find what ailed her sister in heart and mind. She’d never consoled Lucy. And now, she was furious at herself. She had been so utterly selfish.

  “Tillie?” Ian tapped her on the shoulder. She shook herself out of the cobwebs of her memories. “Come on. Let’s go unlock that drawer.”

  Tillie nodded. Making hardly a noise, they crept up the stairs. At the top, Tillie said, “Wait right here.”

  She quickly went into her room and, with slightly shaking hands, withdrew a hidden bottle of opium. She took several drops more than usual to help with her blister pain. When she met Ian outside her room, he said lightly, “You all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you hiding that you take that stuff all the time?” he asked.

  “I’m not hiding. The doctor says I must.”

  Ian’s face was neutral, but that certain dark twinkle in his eyes had gone flat. “I know what hiding is.”

  “It’s fine. Everyone takes it.”

  “That doesn’t make it a good thing,” he said. “You know, I can tell when you take it. You don’t sound the same. You don’t act the same. Tonight, it’s been subtle. But I can tell.”

  Tillie opened her mouth, ready to retort, but Ian held up a hand. “I guess it’s not my place to say anything. Let’s get to work.”

  As Tillie led him down the hallway to Lucy’s room, she tried to tease apart the dark, tight feeling in her belly. She wasn’t upset that he had judged her opium habit; it was that he’d declared that he had no stake in caring about it.

  She shook off the feeling and opened Lucy’s door. Inside, the striped-ivory-and-green taffeta canopies still hung lush and shining, the bed crisply made as if its occupant would be returning soon for a slumber. Tillie knelt before the side table.

  “This is the one. No key, and it’s the only thing locked in the room. I found a drawer full of pencil shavings, but no paper.”

  “How do you know she didn’t write some letters and send them?”

  “Because she wouldn’t have written in pencil. I saw her ink blotter too.”

  “Well, let’s give it a go, shall we?” Ian drop
ped to his knees and pulled out a leather roll tied with a string. He unrolled it and laid out twenty different lockpick tools.

  Tillie picked up three tools, one straight and two with curved notches at the end. She started to fit them into the keyhole, pushing the curved piece higher as the longer one felt for the bolt mechanism. “I need another hand. Can you hold this?”

  Ian held one of the thin metal instruments, and Tillie pushed the third between them. They were a tangle of arms, and her cheek ended up resting lightly against his bristly one.

  “You need to shave,” she murmured as she worked.

  “If I’d known I’d be doing a locksmith waltz, I would have.” She could feel him smile against her, and she took a slow breath, trying to focus.

  “Move your hand this way . . . okay, hold it. And we need to turn together.” Their hands, perfectly orchestrated, turned counterclockwise. There was a slight click and a weight on the instruments as she began to move the tumbler. One final snick of the lock sounded. Ian raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh. We did it,” Tillie said.

  He leaned back on his arms, after dropping his piece. “I’m a good-luck charm.”

  “The tools and practice helped too,” Tillie said dryly. She pulled the drawer open. Inside were two handkerchiefs of Cluny lace. She lifted them and found a broken pin and scraps of ribbon. She tugged the drawer out farther and reached her hand deep into the recesses. She pulled out a leather-bound diary.

  “Eureka!” Ian exclaimed. Tillie shushed him. She flipped to a page in the diary, finding Lucy’s beautiful penciled script filling the pages. She touched the back of her hand to her mouth in astonishment.

  Here were her sister’s words from beyond the grave. Her voice, spoken and yet unspoken. Here she was, and yet Lucy was no longer.

  “Lucy!” It was all she could manage to say.

  “We don’t have to read it,” Ian said quietly. He patted her back inexpertly, and Tillie turned to put her face against his shoulder. It was the most natural thing to do: to turn to him for comfort. Lucy had been her shoulder, and Lucy was gone. These last weeks, there had been no one. Her mother never embraced her, and she’d looked on with graveness whenever Tillie’s father had been demonstrative. From the Pembroke women, Tillie would receive a kiss on the cheek, an airy one at that, on her birthdays. Even Ada, who attended her every need, kept her distance as society dictated.