Iron Cast

by Soria, Destiny;

  With her mother finally appeased enough to not come after her, Corinne spent the rest of the day ranging around the basement of the Cast Iron, picking up books that she could barely concentrate on and pretending to straighten up the common room, though she really just shifted the mess and rearranged the piles. All this occurred under Gabriel’s vaguely amused watch from his seat on the couch. She noticed that he hadn’t moved much since making his way there from the closet with the cot, though he swore that his wound didn’t hurt that badly.

  Corinne wanted to go out and do something, but there was nowhere to go. She also felt strangely guilty at the thought of abandoning Gabriel, even though she was under no obligation to tend to him, and he probably wouldn’t have let her if she’d tried.

  She had told him about her plan to go to the theater tonight with Ada, mostly because she figured that being able to disapprove of something would aid his convalescing. Gabriel disapproved, but he didn’t bother trying to dissuade her. And when he calmly insisted that he was coming along, she put up only a token amount of resistance. “You probably won’t be able to walk that far anyway. And I hate taxis.”

  In reply, Gabriel struggled to his feet. Corinne forced herself not to jump out of her chair to help him. She concentrated on glaring at him in a way that might convey how stupid she thought he was.

  “I’m fine,” he told her, for the eighth time that day. “I need to go check on my mother.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.”

  His voice was even, but the word had a finality to it that gave Corinne pause. She remembered how carefully Ada guarded her mother’s home. Gabriel walked to the stairs with only the slightest hitch in his gait, and Corinne decided he was probably okay to hobble home on his own. The wound on his side didn’t have that many stitches, after all.

  “We leave at six,” she called after him. “Wear a suit.”

  He lifted a hand in acknowledgment and disappeared, slowly, up the stairs.

  “And try not to look armed,” Corinne shouted as an afterthought.

  Gabriel responded by slamming the panel shut. Corinne picked up the book she’d been trying to read, but even in solitude she couldn’t focus on the words. When Saint crept out of his room, she was glad for the distraction. He kept to himself these days, which made him easy to forget about. Saint didn’t say anything to her, just slipped past her chair to the coffee table and snatched up an egg that she didn’t remember seeing during her attempt at tidying.

  “Where did that come from?” she asked.

  He looked at her like a preying wolf had just spoken to him, and he cupped the egg protectively.

  “It’s for a painting,” he said, not really answering her question. “The—the composition is wrong.”

  Corinne wanted to say more, like how odd it was that eggs seemed to be turning up all over the Cast Iron, as if there were a stealthy chicken on the loose. But she remembered she was supposed to hate him and looked back at her book. Saint scurried away. Once he was gone, Corinne twisted in her chair and leaned over the back as far as she could. She could just barely see past the doorframe into Saint’s room. He was pulling a painting from the easel and replacing it with a blank canvas. Stretching over the chair back a couple more inches, Corinne saw that the finished painting was of the common room, rendered in perfect detail, down to the rips in the couches and the clutter on the coffee table.

  Saint shut the door—possibly he had noticed her not-so-subtle spying. Corinne dropped back down in her chair and made herself dutifully turn the pages of her book until half past five, when the phone in Johnny’s office began to ring. She sprang free from the chair and ran to grab it. Maybe Johnny was calling with news.

  It was Ada.

  “Hey, Cor. Don’t be mad.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, nothing.”

  There were muffled voices in the background. Corinne thought she heard music.

  “We just lost track of time,” Ada continued. “I’m not going to make it to the play tonight.”

  “Who’s we? Where are you?”

  “Charlie and I are in the South End. You don’t need me, do you?”

  Corinne wanted to tell her that she did need her, even though that wasn’t strictly true. Mostly she just didn’t understand why Ada would rather go to what sounded like a party with Charlie than help them figure out who was behind the shooting at the docks.

  “I’ll live,” Corinne said. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Everything’s copacetic. Don’t go alone, though. Take Gabriel.”

  “I hope you realize that making me attend a play alone with Gabriel is cruel and unusual punishment.”

  “I owe you one, Cor. Gotta run.”

  The line went dead, and Corinne dropped the receiver into its cradle with a sigh. She returned to the common room, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t upset. Ada had begged off things before, and Corinne understood that. The theater district was a welcoming place relative to the rest of Boston, but society could stomach only so much progressiveness before it revolted. A girl who was both black and a hemopath could not expect a carefree evening on the town, which was something Ada had to remind Corinne of occasionally, as Corinne preferred to forget the ugly truth of it.

  This was different, though. Two members of Johnny’s crew were dead, another wounded, and Johnny still hadn’t returned. Why did Ada insist on pretending that everything wasn’t falling apart? Corinne kept telling herself she wasn’t angry all the way across the common room and to Saint’s doorway. She knocked on the door twice, and after a few seconds he creaked it open, dripping paintbrush in hand.

  “You’re coming to the Mythic with us tonight,” she said. “Find a suit.”

  Ada hung up the phone right as the musicians in the other room roared into a new song. It was all staccato horns and plucked strings and rolling piano. She couldn’t help but smile at the sound.

  “Hey,” Charlie said, sticking his head into the room. “You need to go back?”

  Ada shook her head. She took his hand, and he led her back into the parlor, which had once been a quaint sitting room, decked with floral wallpaper and matching chartreuse curtains. Now the room was hot and packed with bodies. Everyone moved together, sharing cigarettes and passing bottles of liquor. The glossy china plates displayed on the walls quivered with the pounding percussion and shaking floors. The ambience was overwhelming and powerful, and Ada felt closer to the music than she ever had before—even when she coaxed it herself from the violin.

  Corinne didn’t need her at the theater to talk to the Gretskys. And if Ada was honest with herself, she didn’t really want to go. Even if they figured out who the thespian at the docks was, there was nothing they could do about it until Johnny came back. She would rather be standing here, leaning slightly into Charlie, letting him sprawl his fingers over her left shoulder. His index finger tapped an absent rhythm into her collarbone.

  He hadn’t told her much about the party on the way here, just that he knew the band that was playing and it was not to be missed. There were enough iron fixtures in the house that Ada knew the hosts, at least, weren’t hemopaths. When she’d asked Charlie if they knew about him, he had just shrugged and told her that those who knew didn’t care, and those who didn’t know didn’t care to.

  When the music started, Ada began to suspect that she and Charlie were the only hemopaths present. There were no emotions being forged by the instruments. The sound was fully organic, offered with no agenda. It had been so long that Ada had forgotten what it felt like to just listen to the music, to feel whatever she wanted to feel about it, to think about other things while she listened, like how reassuring Charlie’s touch was and how well she fit against his chest.

  “Dance with me?” he asked, his voice rumbling against her back.

  “All right,” she said.

  She took his hand, and they slipped into the crowd of dancing couples. The song was slow for dancing, an
d much of the crowd thinned while the pianist crooned a ballad about a moonlit night and a lovers’ rendezvous. Ada and Charlie stayed pressed together, her arms around his neck, his around her waist. As they swayed to the rhythm, Ada rested her cheek against his chest and breathed deeply. He smelled like freshly laundered cotton, and for a moment the Cast Iron and Haversham felt so far away that she thought maybe they had happened to someone else. Maybe this was the only life she’d ever had, dancing here with Charlie Lewis.

  When she opened her eyes, she realized they were the only ones still dancing. How long had the music been stopped? Charlie hadn’t noticed either, and Ada blushed hotly at the whistles and cheers they garnered. Charlie just laughed.

  “Come on,” he said to the band, eyes bright. “Help me out, won’t you?”

  The pianist chuckled and obligingly leapt into a new, faster melody, followed closely by the trumpets and drums. Ada grinned and let Charlie spin her into the new dance. They were rejoined by the other couples, and soon the party had climbed to a new frenzied height.

  Once they had exhausted themselves, they took a break to mingle with the other guests. Ada met more people than she could possibly remember, and all of them shook her hand joyfully and assured her that any friend of Charlie’s was a friend of theirs. Ada liked the way he moved around the room, effervescent and artless. He hugged people because he was happy to see them. He smiled because he felt like smiling.

  More than anything, she liked being the one at his side.

  “Heya, Charlie,” said one man, throwing a wink in Ada’s direction. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Not his friend,” Ada said. “His girl.”

  “Aw, you sure about that, honey?” the man asked with a good-natured grin.

  In reply, Ada had wrapped her hand around Charlie’s neck and planted a firm kiss on his mouth, catching his startled laugh. The man laughed too, bowing out gracefully.

  “Damn, I like the sound of that,” Charlie said to her.

  Ada smiled and kissed him again.

  They stayed for hours, dancing more and sampling the host’s collection of spirits and food. She was so happy that she even found it easy to ignore the headache from the iron sources in the house. When Charlie took her hand and asked if she was ready to leave, Ada wasn’t at all. But it was getting late, and she was still hoping to beat Corinne home. It took fifteen minutes of farewells before they were allowed to depart, and Ada was sorry when the door shut on the music and they were left in the cold, quiet street.

  “What did you think?” he asked. He hadn’t let go of her hand.

  She was thinking a thousand things. Like how handsome he looked in the moonlight, the sheen of sweat on his forehead drying rapidly in the cold. Like how he’d never once made her feel guilty for not telling him she loved him too. Like how much she wanted to kiss him again.

  “I’m glad we came,” she said at last. “I don’t think the Cast Iron or the Red Cat have ever thrown a party half as good.”

  “The secret ingredient is Carrie Greene’s chitlins and corn-bread. Best I’ve had since I came up north.”

  When she’d first met Charlie, he’d told her he was from down Birmingham way. The only reason he’d given for why he’d left was a few bars from an old blues song about his gal leaving him for a railway man. She hadn’t brought it up since. She’d always been afraid to ask.

  Tonight, with her hand in his and the music from the party still singing through her veins, she felt brave.

  “I hear it’s pretty bad down South,” she said.

  Charlie was quiet for a few seconds, then lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. His free hand drifted absently to his left forearm, and she wondered if he was fingering the tattoo of the tree. Something else she’d never asked him about.

  “Most of the white folk out on their plantations haven’t gotten the news that slavery was abolished. No better in the cities either. Soon as my mama passed, God rest her soul, I hopped the first northbound train I could find.”

  They crossed over some trolley tracks, and Ada flinched as her heel struck the steel embedded in the pavement. Charlie squeezed her hand, and they hurried the rest of the way across the intersection to the safety of the sidewalk.

  “I didn’t know about your mother,” Ada said. “I’m sorry.”

  Charlie shook his head, his eyes fixed ahead. He didn’t reply.

  Ada still wasn’t brave enough to ask about the other stories she’d heard about the South, stories of black men being burned alive, of boys barely out of the school yard being strung up in trees. She knew he probably didn’t want to talk about them either. Sometimes she felt like her only choice in life was between the ironmongers’ chains or the lynch mob’s ropes.

  “They have some fine music down there, though,” Charlie said, a hint of wistfulness in his tone. “In August, even when the air is so thick and humid that the crickets are in a frenzy, you can still hear them songs for miles. Nothing more beautiful than a summer night in Alabama.”

  He turned his head, and Ada felt his eyes on her profile.

  “Well, almost nothing,” he said.

  Ada’s lips quirked, and she nudged him with her shoulder.

  “That the best you can do? Little sappy, don’t you think?”

  “Give me some credit—I’m trying here.”

  His mouth cracked into a grin as he looked at her. For a fleeting second, everything was easy again. The rest of Boston felt faraway. Ada slipped her hands around his neck again and pulled him down for another kiss. She let this one linger, her tongue tangled with his, her heart tangled in knots.

  When she released him, the white clouds of their breaths blended between them in the lamplight.

  “Tell me more about the South,” she whispered. She slid her hand into his, and they started walking again.

  “Hot as hell,” he told her. “There’s mosquitoes big as birds, and so many hills and trees, you can go your whole life without seeing the true horizon.”

  Ada smiled to herself and listened to him go on about the fifty-odd-foot cast-iron statue at the state fairgrounds, ostensibly a god but with crooked arms and a giant Coca-Cola bottle in his hand. Their steps became aimless, and neither of them mentioned, or cared, that they were circling the same three blocks over and over.

  At a quarter past six, Saint still wasn’t ready, which wasn’t typical of him. Corinne had never once convinced him to go with her to a party or a cabaret, but when it came to the Mythic’s plays, he was a stickler for punctuality. Gabriel was running late too, which didn’t strike Corinne as something that would be typical either, considering how fastidious he was about everything else. She hovered outside Saint’s bedroom doorway, making generally unhelpful comments as he struggled with his tie in front of the low, paint-splattered mirror.

  “I can’t get the Windsor knot right,” he said. “If Ada were here—” He bit his lip.

  “Don’t worry,” Corinne said, trying to glaze over the moment. “I’m sure James will still be happy to see you with a half Windsor. A quarter even.”

  Saint leaned over to slam the door on her, though not fast enough to hide the flush of his freckled cheeks. Corinne laughed.

  “I’m going upstairs to wait for Gabriel,” she said through the door. “Hurry up.”

  She pulled on her coat and gloves and went through the club. She didn’t like the way the bar looked when it was deserted, so even though it was cold outside, she didn’t linger. She stepped out the front door into a burst of frigid wind that stole the breath from her lungs. She was just reconsidering waiting at the bar when she caught sight of Gabriel a little farther down the sidewalk.

  The sun had set, but he was standing under a streetlight with an older woman. She was much shorter than him, wearing a long plain coat, with her hair tied in a kerchief and a ratty handbag over her arm. She had her hand at the back of his head, pulling him closer to her, her fingers clutching with something closer to desperation than control. She was speaking fiercely t
o him in a language that Corinne didn’t understand. Corinne strained to hear the last word, and it was one that she did recognize: myshka.

  When the woman saw Corinne, she let out a small noise of surprise. She kissed Gabriel firmly on the forehead and rushed down the sidewalk away from the Cast Iron, her head ducked low. Gabriel’s expression when he turned to see Corinne was not one that she could identify. She had the urge to go back inside and pretend she hadn’t seen anything, but words slipped out of their own accord.

  “Was that your mother?” she asked, taking a few steps closer to him.

  Gabriel was very still, watching her like she was either prey or predator—she couldn’t decide which. She told herself to go inside, to leave it alone. As usual, she did not listen to herself.

  “You’re Russian,” she said.

  He blinked at her, still tense, still unmoving.

  “Myshka,” she repeated. “It’s a Russian term of endearment, right?”

  He glanced around them. The street was peppered with people hurrying home from work or hurrying out to dinner. He ran his hand through his hair and shook his head.

  “I’m not talking about this here. It’s none of your business.”

  “It’s a little bit my business,” Corinne said. “You’re part of Johnny’s crew now.”

  Gabriel started to shake his head again, but Corinne lunged forward to grab his arm and drag him into the club’s entry corridor. They were alone in the cramped space, except for the countless hazy reflections in the mirrors lining the walls.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Gabriel demanded, trying to extricate his arm from her grip with little success.

  “You said you didn’t want to talk about it out there. Now we’re here.”

  Even though the mirrors created the illusion of boundless space, the air between them was stifling. Corinne shifted her weight back to her heels, silently cursing him for being so tall. He was glancing toward the door as if trying to weigh his chances of escape. Corinne tightened her grip on his coat sleeve.