The Game of Love and Death

by Martha Brockenbrough

  “That’s the same thing Ethan said when I refused to print the garbage he brought me. I don’t know what’s wrong with you boys. In my day —”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Thorne,” Henry said.

  “If you leave now, our association is done. You are not to have any contact with Ethan or Annabel or Mrs. Thorne. And don’t come crawling to me when your money runs out and you find yourself on the streets with a tin cup. If I had known your music would turn into this, I would have set fire to that instrument years ago. Your father — this would kill him.”

  “My father’s dead already,” Henry said. “He killed himself.”

  He turned and walked out the door.

  FLORA had a few more tables to set before she could head for the Inquirer offices. It seemed kinder to tell Henry in person. He’d surely find another band — every club in town knew his name now. It would devastate him. But there was no choice.

  Doc snapped the last big shards of glass out of the frame. “I’d cover this,” he said, “but it’s such a nice day I hate to block our air.”

  “But what about security?” Glo laid cutlery on a neatly folded napkin. “The people who did this might like to come back and rob the place. Or worse.”

  Doc rubbed his chin. “Sure enough.” He returned a few minutes later with a sheet of plywood, which he pounded into the frame.

  “Such a shame,” Glo said. “There goes our light.”

  “I’m sorry,” Flora said. “I’ve brought this on you.”

  “You did no such thing. We’ll call it atmosphere. Meanwhile, let’s don’t curse the darkness.” She flicked a light switch so they could see well enough to keep working.

  “As soon as I have some money,” Flora said, “I’ll pay you back.”

  Sherman walked in. “Who needs money? And please tell me one of our guys didn’t do that.”

  “Brick through the window,” Doc said. “Little gift from someone who is not a fan of our opening act, apparently. Flora, show him what the newspaper said.”

  Flora fished the newspaper out of her pocket. It had stuck together in parts where she’d gotten paint on it, but there was enough legible for Sherman to get the gist.

  He whistled low as he read.

  “That’s a terrible thing. Just terrible.” He opened his wallet and offered Doc cash. “For a new window. Our insurance ship came in.”

  Doc waved away the money. “You got your own windows to buy.”

  Flora looked at Sherman, hoping the money would be enough to rebuild the club. He shook his head. Her stomach fell. He didn’t need words to tell her the payment had been poor.

  “We’re not thinking about windows at the moment. New ventures, maybe,” Sherman said. He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Let’s just say the ship that came in was more of a canoe.”

  “You are always welcome here,” Glo said. “I don’t suppose there was enough for Flora to make her flight?”

  Flora shook her head. Talking about this … she just couldn’t.

  “Time will tell.” Sherman put his hand on Flora’s shoulder. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “Knock knock,” a voice said. Flora bristled, recognizing it immediately.

  Helen stepped inside. “I read the newspaper today and I had to see for myself what madness you and Henry have gotten yourselves into,” she said. “I’m so concerned. How are you? Since your incident with the po —”

  “Fine.” Flora’s tone was short. She hadn’t told Glo anything about her arrest and didn’t intend to. That was her private sorrow and Ethan’s father had maneuvered to get the charges dropped against the both of them so there would be no further embarrassment to his family. “Unfortunately, we’re not open yet.” She slapped silverware down with more force than was necessary or wise.

  “But I’d be happy to let you look at a menu,” Glo said, layering her words with extra warmth. “You can come back tonight for the supper and show.”

  Helen accepted the menu but did not read it. “Your bad luck follows you like a tail follows a dog.” She nodded toward the broken window. “Such a pity.”

  “Bad people, not bad luck. There’s a difference.” She had no need for Helen’s condescension. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  Helen laughed. “I was planning to help you.”

  Flora doubted that very much. But she didn’t want Sherman, Glo, and Doc to think she was rude. “And what did you have in mind?”

  “Pour me a drink,” Helen said, “and I’ll tell you.”

  Sherman nudged her from behind. “Don’t keep the lady waiting,” he said. “We need all the friends we can get.”

  Henry practically danced out of the Inquirer Building. Who needed that crummy job, anyway? Well, he did. But he’d make do. He took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and hopped a cable car to Pike Place Market, where he planned to buy a peach for himself and a bouquet of roses for Flora.

  The peach was easy. He found one from Frog Hollow Farm the size of a softball. He ate it standing in the middle of a crowded aisle, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t care that he might be in the way. This was history’s most perfect peach; this was the moment his life became his own. He finished the fruit, dropped its pit into a trash barrel, and then chose a bouquet of red roses.

  “Robin Hoods,” the flower girl said. “Everybody’s favorite.” She wrapped them in the previous day’s paper. Henry shook his head to see it. So much sweat and stress and yelling over this dirty, flimsy newsprint. It was supposed to be his future, his and Ethan’s. And invariably it was the next day’s trash. That was no way to spend a life.

  Henry cradled the bouquet and walked north and then west, past vegetable stalls and fishmongers. He fished a nickel out of his pocket and caught the Third Avenue cable car, which carried him past the Smith Tower. For the first time, he felt nothing as he passed through its shadow. The Majestic wasn’t far from the Yesler stop. Flora stepped outside just as he arrived.

  “Henry!” she said, surprised. “What are you — I thought you’d be at the paper.”

  “I quit!” he said. “I feel like a new man.”

  Her face fell.

  “These are for you.” He held the flowers out to her, puzzled at what made her look so unhappy. She glanced toward the windows. He noticed the plywood sheets and his stomach sank. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, but I have to tell you something.” She paused, as if she were struggling to find the right words.

  Henry swallowed. “I understand. It’s because of the letter to the editor. Doc didn’t like it. Bad press for the Majestic and all.” He felt like a fool holding the flowers. What a lousy idea that had been.

  “What we’re doing, it riles people too much. Next time, it might be worse.”

  His mouth became dry. He knew what he had to do. “I’ll quit, then. Don’t you worry.” He regretted the luxury of taking the cable car. He’d need those nickels.

  Flora twisted her dress in her hands. “That was my first thought. That we might find you another band, maybe even get some help from the union finding you an uptown gig. But music is not my life. It’s yours. You breathe it. I still want to do what Amelia Earhart is trying to do.”

  “But what about the money?” They’d gone over figures. She’d need a fortune to pull it off. Her music was half her income.

  “I’ve found a sponsor. I’m out. Not you.”

  Her news stunned him. He tried to sound happy. “If I may ask, who?”

  Flora’s eyes widened, as if she expected him to know. “I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.” She pressed her lips together, looking uneasy. “It’s Helen. She bought an airplane for me. It’ll be ready in a week.”

  DEATH had always rather liked Amelia Earhart, who reminded her of Flora in many ways. The auburn-haired pilot wasn’t one
to give her heart easily. Her husband had to propose six separate times to get her to agree, which she did only after writing him a letter asking for release if in a year’s time she was miserable.

  The letter read, I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.

  Flora might have written the very same words to Henry. Oh, how she feared the attractive cage of love. The sky was her refuge. Death could make this refuge more appealing than ever. She could remove Flora’s competition.

  The aviatrix and her navigator were surprised to see Death on board their Lockheed Model 10 Electra. Even more surprised when their radio transmissions stopped working. Death had consumed them before the plane hit the water, her blood ringing with things she had not expected to feel as their lives drained into her. Humans and their secrets. Perhaps someday they would stop surprising her.

  The next day, she was the black cat peering through the window of Flora’s house, watching the girl read the morning newspaper. Flora’s reaction was another surprise. The girl did not look hopeful, or even thoughtful, as someone might when a new opportunity opens up.

  Rather, she folded the newspaper, put her hands over her face, and wept.

  DAYS after he’d taken the book, Ethan had still not decided what to do. It felt like a living thing in his pocket. The book gave off warmth, and occasionally it seemed to shudder, as if it were drawing breath. He touched it often, not because he wanted to check that it was still there, but because the feeling was so strange he had to be sure of it. He’d glanced inside a couple of times, but had closed it when he saw how ornate the script was.

  In that time, he hadn’t seen Henry once. Likewise, he’d stayed away from James. His father had returned his article with the word Killed written on every page. Ethan hadn’t protested, lest his words give his father reason to believe his relationship with James had been any more significant than source to journalist.

  Restless, he’d driven around the city until the sun was low in the sky. He did not want to go home, not if it meant he had to face his father and the absence of Henry. He had no interest in joining the crowds at the Seattle Tennis Club awaiting the fireworks display. He considered stopping for food, just to have a diversion. But he had no appetite, and so he headed home not long before sunset and parked beneath a silver maple by the carriage house. He pulled the book out of his pocket, determined to make sense of it. The text was the same inscrutable mess.

  If it had been a baseball, he’d have pitched it through a window, just for the pleasure of smashing something. Instead, he put the book back in his pocket and slipped in the servants’ entrance, risking that Gladys would see him as she cleaned up after dinner. But even if she did, she’d nod and look down as she’d been trained to do by his father. It struck Ethan, as he moved through the butler’s pantry, that his father believed anything he didn’t want to look at shouldn’t be seen. Ethan had obliged with invisibility of his own for so long without realizing he was doing it.

  The kitchen, blessedly, was empty. A bowl of bing cherries sat on the kitchen counter, their red-black flesh shining. Ethan had helped himself to a handful when someone whispered his name. He started and dropped the one he’d been about to consume. Helen stepped out of the shadows — the shadows he’d just examined and found empty.

  “That seems a waste,” she said.

  “What are you doing in here?” Ethan picked up the fruit, which stained his shaking fingertips.

  “Goodness, that looks like blood.” She didn’t look as though she minded.

  “I was hungry.” He was in no mood for teasing.

  She walked closer, the heels of her shoes tapping like bones.

  “Where’ve you been?” She lifted a cherry out of the bowl, popped it into her mouth, and pulled the curving stem between her lips. She closed her eyes as she stripped the pit of fruit before spitting it into her palm.

  “Out,” Ethan said. He crossed his arms and felt the edges of the book under his right hand.

  “So mysterious.” She stepped closer to Ethan, looking up at him through her eyelashes. Her voice cracked. “Come on, you can tell me. I’ll take your secrets to the grave. I’m lonely here, Ethan. I could use a friend. Someone a bit more sophisticated than Annabel.”

  “We’ll never be friends. I don’t trust you.” He uncrossed his arms.

  “Whatever have I done that makes me seem untrustworthy?” She put a hand on his chest, right where the book was. “If only you knew the things I’ve done, you’d never worry about anyone’s opinion of you again.”

  Ethan moved her hand away and ate a cherry. It was a good one: just the right amount of give between his teeth, its flavor balanced between sweet and tart. Simple and perfect, just as it was. He could not point to any specific untrustworthy thing Helen had done, and he felt himself softening toward her. If truth be told, his behavior — his predilections — were far more scandalous than anything in Helen’s past. If people knew … The thought made him want to choke.

  Ethan looked at Helen and recognized the lonely aspect of himself. “Put a few more cherries into the bowl,” he said, offering her his arm. “We’ll eat them in the library.”

  She smiled, and Ethan thought it a pity he could never love her, not in that way. It didn’t mean that they couldn’t be allies of a sort. The wiser part of him knew he should wait until Henry had time to read him the book. But Henry would be disappointed in Ethan if he knew what had happened with James. Worse than disappointed. It might end their friendship.

  Helen caught his gaze. “We’re going to be the best of friends, Ethan,” she said. “For the rest of your life.”

  He pushed away the rising feeling of dread. “I found a book.”

  “Books are dull,” she said. “Wouldn’t you rather play a game?”

  “It’s an interesting one. I’d love to hear you read aloud from it.” Such a thin request. Surely she’d see through it and realize his illiteracy. But he had to know what it said, and he could stop her if James had written anything too scandalous.

  “Oh, all right,” Helen said. “It has been a tedious evening. I’ll read it — with feeling. But perhaps we should invite your parents to join us. Make a show of it.”

  “No! — That is to say, it would be much more fun if it were just the two of us, don’t you think? If it’s worth sharing, we can always do that later.”

  “Whatever you’d like, cousin,” Helen said. “I’m all yours.”

  FOR thousands of years, Love had filled the book. Death knew this, and yet she’d never been tempted to look inside for fear of what had been written about her. It was one thing to do what she had to do. It was another thing to see it on the page, especially through the eyes of her enemy.

  “Where shall we sit?” She looked at Ethan’s bare wrist. She could make him feel better, temporarily and then permanently, with a touch. She ached to show him his life so that he could see the beauty in it.

  “How about there?” Ethan interrupted her thoughts, gesturing toward a hand-carved love seat covered in crimson velvet, the one style of furniture she found amusing above all others. On more than one occasion, she’d turned one into a death seat.

  “The perfect choice.” She fought her urge to kill Ethan on the spot. “And so cozy.”

  Ethan helped her sit. He reached into his pocket and produced the book. It was a lovely object.

  “Where did you get this?” She traced the intricate cover. Love had an eye for beauty and a way of transforming the simple into the spectacular.

  Ethan faced her, the barest bit of moonlight on his face. In the long, silent war with time, his beauty would give way. His skin, now smooth, would pucker and sag. Dark spots would mottle its edges. His clear eyes would grow rheumy, as yellow tinged the whites and cataracts muddied his irises. Wouldn’t it be a gift to deliver h
is beauty whole, before time had done its damage?

  He cleared his throat and looked away, the liar. “I — I found it.”

  “On the street?”

  “Something like that.” He blushed.

  “And you haven’t looked inside? Perhaps the owner wrote his name. Or hers. This is a fairly feminine cover, don’t you think?” She took it from him.

  “It is fancy. I wouldn’t say feminine.” Ethan swallowed. “I looked inside, but I didn’t see a name.”

  “The curiosity is killing me.” Death opened the book. “Hmm.”

  “What? What does it say?”

  She’d only fed something to a mind a few times. And that was just a few memories, most recently the scene of Flora’s parents’ death. What would the entire book do? Possibly kill Ethan, or drive him mad. She closed her fingers around his wrist.

  “Your fingernails. They’re red.” Ethan’s voice slurred. His eyes rolled back and his limbs jerked as she poured the contents of the book into his mind. He fought back, trying to peel her fingers away. But even this perfect human specimen could no sooner escape her than the earth could unhitch itself from the sun.

  If he lived, the boy would know the entire futile, messy history of the Game. He would watch the asp sink its fangs into Cleopatra, the castration of Abelard, the slow death of Lancelot, the suicide of Juliet, players all. Certain things she would keep from him. Her own identity, for example. She would also conceal the fact that the Game would end in three days. Should he tell Henry and Flora, that knowledge might risk her victory. Everything else, he would learn. And he would understand her gift: deliverance from pain. Real love was death. If he withstood the learning, he would welcome the gift.

  And yet she could not end his life. Not yet. Not when they were so alike, Ethan and she. So she released his hands. Left him gasping on the love seat as she walked slowly from the room, taking the book with her.