Henry of Atlantic City

by Frederick Reuss

  “I’m having a special guest for dinner tonight,” Theodora said. “You’re going to eat with us.” She stood up and finished her glass of lemonade. “Would you help me set the table?”

  Henry followed her into the dining room, which had a wall of windows overlooking the ocean. The penthouse was shaped like a giant star on the top of the Palace and every room opened onto a patio. The dining room and the living room had glass walls and a garden between them with lots of plants and walkways and even a pond with goldfish in it. At the far edge of the garden you could see the other tall buildings thrown up along the coastline.

  Theodora opened a drawer and picked out some knives and forks and spoons and handed them to Henry. She opened another drawer and took out some linen and told Henry where to put everything. Then she put glasses at each place and explained that one was for water and the other for wine and even though Henry was too young for wine, that was how you set a table properly. She went into the next room and came back with a big vase full of flowers and put it on the table between two tall candles and she stood back and crossed her arms and said it looked nice.

  A man came in wheeling a silver cart.

  “Put it over there, Larry,” Theodora told him and pointed to a place along the wall of the dining room. “And say hello to Henry.”

  “Hello, Henry,” Larry said.

  “Say hello to Larry, Henry,” Theodora said. “You’re going to be seeing a lot of him. He’s the butler.”

  Henry said hello.

  Larry was dressed up in a monkey suit. That’s what Sy used to call them. Larry smoothed out the tablecloth and rearranged a few things. He had big muscles and a nice voice. Henry didn’t remember him from before. He must have just come to the Palace. “Should I bring up some wine?” he asked.

  “Some chardonnay for me,” Theodora said. “I don’t think anyone else will care for wine.” Then she told Henry to go get dressed and get ready to meet their guest.

  From the window of his room Henry could see in the direction of the Golden Horn. He could see the buildings the emperor had built, including the Hagia Sophia and the Senate and other new buildings that had risen out of the destruction caused by the riots. They were bigger and more magnificent and also more severe than the old buildings that had once made the city a more comfortable place to live. Instead of wood they were built with stone and glass. Their names were Bailey’s and Trump and Tropicana and Taj and helicopters could land on their roofs and people came and went through large doors that swallowed them and spat them out again.

  Henry buttoned up his shirt and listened to his angel. The angel said the world came about through a mistake, which meant everything in the world was also a mistake—including the way Henry buttoned his shirt. It was warm outside, and light. The other hotels were all closed up behind glass windows and lighted signs that never went off. The signs stayed on so people from other parts of the empire and foreign visitors could know where they were. There were people from everywhere, not just Greeks and Romans but Cappadocians and Phrygians and Goths and Celts and Armenians and Copts and Syrians and Jews and Franks and Huns and Gepids and Avars and Sarmatians and Bulimics.

  Theodora knocked on the door and came in. She saw Henry standing in front of the mirror in the clothes she had given him. “My, you look handsome!” She stood next to him and combed his hair to one side with her fingers. They stood there together for a minute just looking at their reflections in the mirror. Theodora rested her hand on Henry’s shoulder. She was wearing a ring with a huge diamond that sparkled cruelly, as if her hand were something that could do or undo anything she wanted. Henry watched the diamond sparkle while Theodora judged their appearance in the mirror. “Our dinner guest is here. Come in and say hello.” She took Henry by the hand and led him to the living room.

  The emperor was sitting on the sofa. He looked exactly like before except the bright lights made him look pale and white and the big sofa made him look small. He had big brown freckles on his head and was wearing a white shirt that had a little design on it.

  “Say hello, Henry,” Theodora said.

  Henry said hello.

  “Hello, Henry,” the emperor said and motioned for Henry to come sit by him. Henry went and sat on the sofa—not next to the emperor but at the other end. “Come closer, son.” He patted the cushion. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Henry moved closer but still didn’t sit next to the emperor. Theodora went over to the big window and adjusted the curtains.

  “How do you like your new home?” the emperor asked.

  Henry said it was all right. Then his angel said the veil at first concealed how God ordered the creation, but when the veil is rent and the things within become visible this house will be left deserted and will be destroyed.

  The emperor stared at Henry and didn’t say anything. Henry could hear him breathing and he wondered if the old man was sick. In the Palace there were machines that told you your weight and your fortune, your mood and your fortune, and your blood pressure and your fortune. All you had to do was put a coin in and step onto a scale or put your finger into a metal loop. Henry wondered if the emperor needed to go use one of those machines. “Do you remember me?” the emperor finally asked. “You came to visit me once.”

  Henry nodded his head but didn’t say anything. Theodora was standing over by the sliding glass door that led outside. Her eyes were sparkling like the diamond on her finger. “I hope you don’t mind if we sit right down to eat,” she said.

  The emperor waved his arm. “Please.”

  Theodora led the way to the table. Larry was standing behind a silver cart. He gestured for the emperor to sit at the head of the table. Theodora sat on the emperor’s right and Henry sat on his left in a chair with a booster seat.

  “Would you care for wine?” Larry asked the emperor.

  The emperor shook his head. “Just my usual,” he said.

  Larry poured the emperor some fizzy water from a green bottle that said Apollonaris on it. It didn’t look like anything an emperor or a god would drink, it looked like medicine.

  “I’ll have wine,” Theodora said. Larry took a bottle wrapped in a white cloth from a bucket. He poured wine into Theodora’s glass.

  “What would you like to drink, Henry?” Larry asked. Henry said water and Larry got a glass pitcher and filled Henry’s glass. The water had ice in it and Henry counted the cubes. There were seven. Then he looked up at the emperor and asked if his father got the job.

  The emperor frowned. He took a sip of his fizzy water and put the glass down. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, son,” he said.

  Theodora had a funny look on her face. “Would you mind explaining, Henry?”

  Henry said the job his father had asked for when they came to visit. Did the emperor give it to him?

  The emperor wrinkled his forehead and his eyes opened wide. “Ah, that,” he said and shook his head. “I’m afraid not, son. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even wait around to find out. He just—well, he just disappeared.” He looked at Theodora.

  Theodora nodded. “That’s right, Henry. That’s why I brought you here. To take care of you and keep you safe.”

  The emperor said, “Son, your father committed a serious crime and absconded. Do you know what absconded means?”

  Henry said it meant that he escaped through a hole in the darkness and into another darkness.

  Theodora smiled and took a sip of her wine.

  The emperor shook his head. “You’re too young to understand, son. When you’re older, that’s when you’ll understand.”

  “Try not to think about it too much,” Theodora said. “What’s important now is that you’re safe and sound.” She reached across the table and tried to take Henry’s hand but he moved away.

  Just then Larry came in with three small salads and set one down in front of each of them. “Bon appetit,” he said and poured more wine into Theodora’s glass.

  The emperor pick
ed up his fork. “Have you ever been up in a helicopter?” he asked Henry.

  Henry shook his head.

  “They’re fun,” Theodora said. “Helicopter tours! We’ll take one tomorrow. Would you like that?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “You can see the whole coastline,” the emperor said.

  Henry said I have cast the beam out of my own eye and now see clearly enough to cast the mote from the eye of my brother.

  The emperor made a funny face and Theodora laughed. Her laugh didn’t sound like it came from deep inside but from someplace behind her nose. Then the emperor put his fork down and took some bread from the basket on the table. He began to eat but his frown didn’t go away and he took another sip of fizzy water.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Theodora said. She took a tiny sip of her wine.

  The emperor didn’t say anything and didn’t look up from his plate.

  “I don’t want anyone to be unhappy or to worry,” Theodora said. She looked at the emperor and at Henry. “Everything is going to turn out just fine.”

  The emperor kept eating and didn’t say anything. He moaned very quietly as he chewed. He began to slump in his chair a little and it made him look somehow sad and unhappy. Then he put his fork down, took his napkin, and wiped his mouth. Larry appeared right away. He took the empty plates and put new ones in front of them. The emperor began to eat and nobody said anything for a few minutes. Then he saw that Henry wasn’t eating. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t like chicken?”

  Henry shook his head.

  The emperor shook his head. “You’re too young to be turning your nose up at good food, young man.” He popped a piece of bread into his mouth and looked at Henry as he chewed. “Come on, now. Eat.”

  Henry felt his ears burning. Then his angel began to talk. Henry sat there looking at the old emperor and Theodora and they seemed to him like mute facades inhabited by some mysterious indisposition. He wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat and didn’t want to talk or answer questions anymore. He wished he could go back to Saint Jude’s. He slid off his chair and his napkin fell on the floor. He walked away without picking it up.

  “Come back here, young man,” the emperor said. “You haven’t been excused.”

  “That’s all right,” Theodora said. “Let him go.”

  Some kids were afraid of the dark. Henry guessed they were afraid because they couldn’t see what it contained. They were afraid because it swallowed them and when you were swallowed by darkness you were cut off from everything else—even your parents. Parents were no good in the dark. They were part of the light. If you took your parents with you into the dark they were no longer your parents. But if you suddenly found yourself in the light and someone was next to you holding your hand, that person was your parent and when they disappeared whoever took their place was your parent and on and on in one direction until the beginning and in the other direction until the end of the world, where you found yourself standing next to the one God, who had left you to your own devices.

  He went to his room and began to cry. He stood in front of the mirror and saw his new clothes, his whole self and his self apart. He turned toward the window that looked out upon his two cities, which were also two entities yet one form. Atlantic City. Byzantium. Everything resolved itself in twos, even Henry’s angel, who was both silent and not silent at the same time and who drove Henrys thoughts and was driven by them. The angel said everything in twos would dissolve into its earliest origin. Henry tried to think of his own earliest origin but the earliest he could remember was the time when he and his father had lived in the apartment with Ten Cents a Dance. Further back was only darkness.

  At last he stopped crying. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up. His angel was standing next to him. It had big wings that arched high up and towered over them both. They were thick with soft, transparent feathers and the tips almost touched the ground. They were real wings. Wings to fly with, wings to soar. Henry was not afraid. He looked into the angel’s face. It was the face of a man and a woman and a friend with a door that opens at every knock. Henry closed his eyes. Antonia was making noise in the kitchen and he could hear the wind outside and the hum of all the floors of the vented building underneath him. He thought of Father Crowley and Dr. Alt and Father Rogan and Sy and his father and the Whore of Jersey City and Helena and her baby and Mohammed Ali and Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien. The darkness felt good. Henry followed his angel toward it and together they dissolved into their earliest origins.

  Theodora came into Henry’s room and sat on the edge of the bed. She didn’t say anything for a while but just sat there with her legs crossed and her hands on her knee. “What can I do to help you be less angry?” she finally asked.

  Henry said I have cast fire upon the world and I am guarding it until it blazes.

  “I don’t understand you, Henry. You’ll have to think of another way of expressing yourself to me.”

  Henry said nothing.

  “Where did you learn to say such things?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “Is that how they talk at Saint Jude’s?”

  Henry said no.

  “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

  Henry said an angel taught him.

  Theodora stood up and walked over to the window and stood there. Behind her the city blinked, walls of little lights stacked up on top of and beside one another against the blackness. The diamond on her hand sparkled as though the sun were shining on it. She leaned against the windowsill. She was tall and lean and looked different up close than she did gliding through the water of the swimming pool. She looked old, and Henry remembered that his father had always said she was older than she looked and that she used her power like an old man does—to keep people in their places and at a safe distance. “Maybe we should get things right out in the open,” she said. “Put all our cards on the table.”

  Cards made Henry think about Sy but as soon as he did he wished he hadn’t because now Sy was gone.

  “I can’t force you to be happy. But I promise that I will always be frank with you. I hope, at the very least, you will respect me for that.” She paused for a minute and looked down at the floor. “You know that your father has done a terrible thing.”

  Henry asked what his father did that was terrible.

  “He stole. He cheated. He lied. Worst of all, he abandoned you, his own helpless child.”

  Henry focused his eyes on the blinking lights outside. Theodora’s features became blurry and hardened at the same time. “I’m not trying to make you any sadder than you already are. Do you understand that?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you either. Or cause you any more pain than you’ve already suffered. Are you listening to me?”

  Henry tried not to cry.

  “Would you like me to explain why I brought you here?”

  Henry nodded.

  “Okay, Henry,” she said. “The reason is because I want to protect you. I don’t want to see you suffer any more than you already have. Together you and I will stand up against what your father has done. He will have to face up to what he did to you by facing up to me; and he’ll have to face up to what he did to me when he faces up to you.” She came over and sat down on the bed again. “We need to stick together. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “One day—even if he’s never caught—your father will have to come to terms with what he has done. He might have put himself beyond our reach and the reach of the law, but he hasn’t put himself beyond the reach of his own conscience. When he is ready to confront that—we’ll be waiting for him.” She poked her finger into the mattress. “Right here. You and I. The both of us, together.”

  The room was dark except for the light in the bathroom that laid a streak across the floor and climbed up the far wall. Theodora stood up. “I’m going to take good care of you, Henry. And as
long as we are together, your father will not get away.” She stood there in the streak of light and Henry remembered the days when he would watch her swimming; now she was standing right in front of him, not dripping wet but lit up and sparkling with jewels. “Good night,” she said and quietly left the room.

  A while later Antonia came into Henry’s room. “Come into the kitchen and I’ll fix you a snack,” she said. She was wearing an old robe that hung down to her ankles and her gray hair was loose and hung down around her shoulders. It made her look decrepit.

  Henry was sitting up in the bed. He said he didn’t want anything.

  “Can I come in for a minute?”

  Henry said okay.

  Antonia came in and looked around. “We fixed the room up just for you,” she said and turned on the desk lamp. “Do you like it?”

  Henry nodded.

  “Theodora wants you to like her and feel at home,” the old woman said. “She wants that very badly.”

  Henry said nothing.

  “She works very hard. Too hard, if you ask me. She never had a family of her own. I think she’s lonely.”

  Henry said what about her husband.

  Antonia shook her head and gave Henry a funny look. “It’s been a rough day,” she said and stood up. “If you get hungry in the middle of the night there’s a piece of apple pie in the fridge. Help yourself.”

  Henry lay in bed and waited in the darkness until all he could hear was the quiet humming of the building. Then he opened the door and tiptoed out into the hall. At the far end of the hallway was a door with a key in the lock. Henry turned the key and opened the door. A staircase led down into darkness. He felt along the wall for a switch but couldn’t find one. Then he heard a sound like a door opening and he stepped through the door and closed it behind him. It was pitch black.