The Wicked City: A stunning love story set in the roaring twenties

by Beatriz Williams

  My room contains no closet, properly speaking. I keep my dresses and suits on the hooks on the wall, neatly pressed, and my shirts folded in order in the second drawer of the bureau. Stockings and girdles and brassieres up top. I wash myself with the water from the pitcher and apply my navy suit, my white shirt, my dark stockings and sensible shoes. My small, neat hat over my shining hair. No cosmetics, not even a smear of lip rouge. Company orders. Banks. They’ve awfully conservative.

  Downstairs, Mrs. Washington has laid out breakfast. Some of the other girls are there, Betty and Jane and Betty the Second, drinking coffee and spooning porridge. Nobody speaks. The newspaper hasn’t been touched. The room contains its usual atmosphere of java and drugstore perfume. I pour myself a cup of coffee and spread a layer of jam over a slice of cold toasted bread. Pick up the paper and take in the headlines. Izzy and Moe led a raid the other night, fancy joint up on Fifty-Second Street. Eighty-six arrested, including forty-one ladies. (The paper drops the term ladies with conspicuous irony.) No mention of doings on Christopher Street, but I suppose Special Agent Anson charged in and ordered his milk well after deadline for the early morning edition. Anyway, I haven’t got time to read past page one. I stuff the crust in my mouth, gulp the last of the coffee, blow a good-bye kiss in the direction of my sisters (I’m getting the silent treatment these days because of Billy, and I can’t say I blame them), and as I whirl around the corner, thrusting arms in coat sleeves, fingers in mittens, I run smack into Mrs. Washington herself, wiping her hands on an apron.

  “Oh! Miss Kelly. There you are at last.”

  “Mrs. Washington. Can’t stop. Late for work!”

  “But, Miss Kelly—”

  “I’ll be back at six!”

  “—telegram?”

  Halt. Hand on doorknob. Skin prickling beneath muffler. Mouth going dry. I think, That door surely does want painting, doesn’t it?

  “Telegram?” I repeat.

  “Arrived last night. Put it under your door. Didn’t you see? Western Union.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, about eight o’clock or so. I hope it’s not bad—”

  Well, I brush right past Mrs. Washington’s hopes and on up the stairs, first flight second flight third flight, panting, fumbling for latchkey in pocket, there it is, jiggle jiggle, door squeaks open.

  Floor’s bare. Of course. I would have noticed a damned yellow Western Union envelope on my nice clean floor, wouldn’t I? Even enrobed by loveydovey. So Billy must have picked it up for me and put it somewhere. Forgotten to mention that fact, in the heat of things. Dear Billy-boy. Never would open the envelope and peek inside, because he’s a gentleman. The snow’s turned to sleet, clicking hurriedly against the window glass. The room’s in perfect order, every last meager object occupying its ordained place. Where would Billy put a Western Union envelope not intended for his own eyes? The bureau.

  But no splash of yellow interrupts the nice clean surface of my battered thirdhand bureau. Just the mirror and the hairbrush and the vanity tray. Washstand is likewise pristine. Heart goes thump thump, pushing aside my ribs. Hand clenches mittens. Where the devil, Billy? Where the devil did you put that telegram? Darling, love-struck Billy, consumed by worry, all of twenty years old and not thinking straight. Books lined up in rigid order on the wall shelf. Bed all made, flat as a millpond. Above my head, someone thumps across the attic floor and slams a door shut, and the furniture rattles gently.

  Rattles. Gently.

  Thump thump thump goes my neighbor down the stairs, around the corner of the landing, down the next flight. The washbowl clinks its porcelain clink. The way it does in the pit of a New York winter’s night, when you are expressing your carnal need for another human being, no matter how regardful you are of the walls and furniture and sleeping boarders.

  I sink to my hands and knees, and there it is, wedged upright between the wall and the bureau. A thin yellow envelope. Yank bureau away from the wall a couple inches, stick arm in gap. Miss Geneva Kelly, 11 Christopher Street, New York City. And I am correct about Billy Marshall’s principles. The glue’s undisturbed.

  For the smallest instant, I just sit there, back against the wall, legs splayed. Envelope pinched between my fingers. Black ink staring back. My name. The large Roman capitals WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM. As if I didn’t know.

  But no little black stars. Nobody’s dead. That’s something, isn’t it?

  I stick my index finger in the crease and rip.

  1924 JAN 31 PM 6 41

  MISS GENEVA KELLY

  11 CHRISTOPHER STREET NEW YORK CITY

  MAMA SICK STOP ASKING FOR YOU STOP COME HOME EARLIEST STOP LOVE JOHNNIE

  New York City, 1998

  ELLA ALWAYS hated how, when you went to a cocktail party in Manhattan, or met someone over drinks or dinner or brunch with friends, the first question was always: So what do you do?

  Meaning, your job.

  She understood why, of course. New York was the city of dreams; it was where you went to chase those dreams, if you wanted them badly enough. In New York, of all places, your career defined you; people understood you on the basis of what you did for a living. If your dream was money, you worked on Wall Street. (Ella had yet to meet any investment banker who pursued his career because of a single-minded childhood desire to help companies meet their capital needs.) If your dream was also money, but you weren’t so good with numbers, you worked for a law firm. If your dream was money and you were okay at numbers but were only willing to work eighty hours a week instead of a hundred, you went into management consulting. If your dream was … well, come to think of it, Ella had yet to meet anyone in New York whose dream wasn’t money. But they were there. She saw them in restaurants and at Starbucks and on street corners. The actors and singers and writers and dancers and musicians and models. Whose dreams were also money, but in service to some other, more complicated dream.

  As for Ella. She wasn’t sure why she came to New York, really. She always dreaded that question—What do you do?—because the answer was so boring. I’m an accountant. Cue the eyes shifting around the room, seeking an opportunity elsewhere. The dull, automatic Uh-huh as she explained that she was actually a forensic accountant, parachuting from dead company to dead company, dissecting the carcass to figure out what had gone wrong and who was to blame. Which was kind of like solving a complicated murder mystery, except with numbers. But by then, her new acquaintance wasn’t really listening. The word accountant turned a switch in people’s brains, so that anything else you said just made a garbled Blah bla-bla-blah in the air, like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

  Whatever. Why did Ella come to New York? She came to New York because she got a job offer after college from a large Manhattan accounting firm, with health insurance and a 401(k) and a starting salary generous enough to afford her very own tiny walk-up apartment on the Upper West Side, close to the park, not too many crack vials on the stairs outside and—most importantly—no roommate to ask her how her day went and eat all her leftover ziti in the fridge. End of story. End of dream.

  Of course, once she met Patrick, she thought she knew what had brought her to Manhattan. Fate! She was fated to meet Patrick there, fated to fall in love with him. She’d been so close to taking a job with that firm in Boston—and really, Boston was a better fit for her, felt more like home to her—and she hadn’t. So she was meant to be a New Yorker. Meant to be Patrick’s wife. Her dream was love.

  THANK GOD, THEN, SHE HAD a backup dream. Her job. Sure, she’d veered off the partner track long ago, once she realized that making partner basically meant spending all your time trying to win new business and manage client expectations. But she liked what she did. In the first place, every few months, she got assigned to a new carcass, and if Tolstoy had been a forensic accountant, he would have said that thriving companies were all alike, but each company failed in its own way. Usually because somebody was doing something illegal.

  This was especially true in the financial services
industry, in which Ella had ended up specializing, partly because she worked from the New York office and partly because she ended up knowing Wall Street so intimately: the inevitable result of marrying someone who worked there. So many scoundrels, so much greedy ingenuity. (That was the second reason she liked her job. Matching wits against all those greedy, scoundrelly minds.) So she looked forward to being called into a partner’s office at the start of a new gig. You never knew where you might get sent, or why.

  Today in particular. She’d been on the beach for four weeks now, waiting for a new assignment. Doing routine internal business—PowerPoint slides for business pitches, interviewing college students, that kind of thing—that left far too much of her intellect free to wallow in the forensic analysis of her failed marriage. She preferred numbers. So orderly, so incapable of deceit. She stared at the family photo on the credenza behind Travis’s desk—kind of artsy, black and white, silver Tiffany frame, smiling wife and clean-cut twin boys of maybe five or six years, wearing white polo shirts and chinos—and wondered, for the first time, if Travis had ever cheated on them.

  Until three weeks ago, she would have said no. Of course not. Travis was a solid, decent guy, not the cheating type at all. Never made a pass at her. Never treated the PAs with anything other than professional courtesy. Profoundly boring middle-aged haircut. But then, three weeks ago, she would have said the same thing about Patrick. Earnest, romantic. Loved his mom. They’d been trying for a baby for almost a year, a baby Patrick really wanted. And then—

  “—get in a taxi now?”

  “I’m sorry. Lost my train of thought. Taxi where?”

  “Is everything okay, Ella?”

  “Sure! Fine. Just need another cup of coffee, I think.”

  Travis stared at her and spoke slowly, patiently, like he probably spoke to his twins when they weren’t paying attention. That was the kind of guy he was. Never lost his cool. Just like Patrick. “To Wall Street, Ella. Corner of Broad. You’ll be working right at the bank’s headquarters this time.”

  “Oh. Right.” Ella knew better than to ask which bank. Instead, she glanced down at the spiral-bound briefing book on her lap, which lay unopened, navy blue cover flat over an inch-thick stack of white paper, held shut by two remarkably tensile, white-rimmed thumbs.

  The title seared her eyeballs.

  STERLING BATES INC.

  MUNICIPAL BOND DEPARTMENT

  “Ella? Everything okay?”

  “Fine!”

  “There’s no issue here, is there? Conflict of interest? Because this is a sensitive project, like I said. Some big names involved. And the whole thing could blow up on us, depending on what we find, which is why we want you on the team. We need our best people, and we need them at their best. We can’t afford a single mistake on this. Got to have your head in the game. Are we clear, here?”

  Ella laid her left hand flat on the surface of the briefing book, obscuring the cutout white rectangle of black block text.

  “Absolutely clear,” she said.

  ELLA’S CELL PHONE VIBRATED AT a quarter to midnight, while she lay flat on the folding table in the laundry room, listening to the sounds from the other side of the wall.

  She picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID. Set it down again. The table buzzed beneath her back, at soothing, regular intervals, before lapsing back into stillness. Immediately after it stopped, Ella felt the familiar twinge of guilt. Imagined Patrick flipping his own phone closed, staring despondently at the reclaimed-wood floor in the living room or the tight, golden sisal weave in the bedroom. Or, just as easily, the industrial carpet in his twenty-ninth-floor office at Sterling Bates.

  He called every day, sometimes twice. He also e-mailed, not as frequently. Most of those messages sat unopened in her inbox, but not all. Last week, the morning after she met Hector and Jen and came down to the laundry room in the middle of the night, she had such a terrible insomnia hangover at work, she actually forgot she was separated from her husband, forgot what had happened the last time she saw him, and clicked on his name. Automatic response. Started reading before she could help herself.

  I AM SO SORRY. I’ll keep saying it, over and over, until you believe me. If you could just see what a wreck I am right now. I know I have a problem. I’m getting help now. I just want to see you and try to explain and apologize. I swear to God it will never, ever happen again. I love you. I love our marriage. You are the most important thing in my world. Please—

  She’d clicked away to a spreadsheet. Looked down at her keyboard and tried to breathe. Sipped some coffee while her heartbeat rippled her silk blouse and her head ached and her stomach swam.

  Do not reply, she’d told herself. Do not reply.

  She’d sent back the flower deliveries that arrived daily at Aunt Viv’s apartment, each one more fragrant and costly than the last. She’d filed the cards and notes in the circular. She’d let her cell phone vibrate into voice mail. She’d restrained her mouse from clicking on any one of the e-mails, until now. She hadn’t even told him her new address. She knew better. There wasn’t an argument Patrick couldn’t win, a deal he couldn’t close. All he needed was a foot in the door.

  The phone buzzed again. This time she turned it off entirely and concentrated instead on the music drifting through the walls, a jazz tune of exuberant syncopation, in which a trumpet and a bass and a clarinet chased each other in dizzying circles, making her think—God knew why—of forest animals. That was it. Scurrying up and down trees. This was real jazz, not the junk they played in tourist traps. Sound, bluesy, inventive jazz, and the patrons knew it. They laughed and chattered and danced—Hector was right, the vibration of heels sometimes rattled the floor—and while Ella couldn’t distinguish any particular voice, she was starting to feel like she knew them, these people, communing by night in a Greenwich Village basement. Hiding from the rest of the world, experiencing this elemental music in the shared marrow of their bones.

  The first night, she had listened for maybe an hour, standing the whole time, not moving a muscle for fear she might lose. Like the sound would dissolve if she reached out to touch it, or even to approach the gray cinder-block wall that separated her from them. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the table, and the sight of her own mesmerization startled her. Eyes soft and lips round. If the image were of anyone else, she’d have said it was the look of someone in love. When she turned at last and climbed the stairs, five long prewar flights back to her apartment, she went to bed and fell right asleep to the pensive, delicate notes of a piano.

  And she knew that she hadn’t chosen this apartment, after all. The apartment had chosen her.

  THE MUSIC NEXT DOOR WAS already having its effect. Her brain settled into a comfortable trance; she wasn’t ready for sleep yet, but she was close. The images shifting in and out of focus behind her eyes, the scenes and ideas, they weren’t the frightful thoughts about Patrick—about Patrick and other women—about her vast, unfamiliar future—about the once-sturdy milestones now scattered about that future like bowling pins—but about other things. People she didn’t know. A champagne bottle tottering on a sofa, next to a man’s black tuxedo leg. Another man, playing a nimble clarinet, except he’s not a stranger, he’s someone you know, and you’re trying to tell him something. Now driving a narrow, tree-bordered highway while a sunset burns behind you. (Somehow Ella knew that Manhattan lay between her and that sunset, though she couldn’t say why.) Sitting down for a drink at a bar, where you know the bartender; you’re commiserating about something. The colors, the colors are so beautiful. A rich, red-streaked mahogany. Gold something. The taste of salt.

  Time to go to bed now, Ella. You’ve had your fill. Jazz and conversation. She lifted her head and rose to her elbows, groggy, jostling the cell phone so that it crashed to the floor. She leaned over the edge of the table and reached to the floor, but the phone lay just beyond the tips of her fingers, and for some reason she didn’t want to get down from the table alto
gether, which was the logical solution, but to snag the phone from her current position, and while she was attempting this awkward maneuver, some woman next door started to scream bloody murder. The music broke up. Ella, startled, fell right off the table to the gray linoleum floor.

  For several seconds, she didn’t do anything. Just listened in shock to the sound of that screaming woman, the long, excruciating rip of vocal cords, the bang of furniture turning over. Or was that a gunshot? A man shouted something terse, and the screaming stopped.

  Ella rose on her hands and knees. Her heartbeat crashed in her ears; her arms shook. Somewhere in her chest, a gash opened up, as if someone had taken a knife and sliced right down the center of her sternum.

  She braced her hands on the table and staggered to her feet. Spots broke out before her eyes, and she realized she wasn’t breathing, that her terror and the downright physical pain assaulting her had frozen her rib cage. Breathe, she whispered. Forced her lungs to act. The cavity inside to expand—painfully—and contract.

  On the other side of the wall, silence had fallen. Not a sound, not a note. She thought, I have to call the police. She picked up her phone, which was blank and dark, and pressed the power button.

  The light came on. She flipped it open. No bars. No bars, when there had been three or four a moment ago.

  Go upstairs, she thought. Go see if anyone needs help.

  She turned around, still clutching her phone, waiting for it to find a signal, and ran for the laundry room door. Up the dark staircase, around the corner, down the dim hallway to the front door. She flung the door open and ran down the steps to the wet sidewalk. The drizzle fell softly on her hair and nose and hands; the smell of rotting garbage lay in the air, though the sanitation pickup had come yesterday and the pavement was clear. She wrapped her fingers around the railing that surrounded the basement next door. Not a sound, not a light, not a single sign that anyone lived there, let alone ran an exclusive jazz club into the small morning hours.