by Allyson Bird
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Name it.”
He walked to his bureau, and opening the top drawer, withdrew an envelope. He tossed it on the bed at her feet.
“An invitation,” he said, as she withdrew two stiff, creamy squares of cardstock. “Two, actually… to a cocktail party.”
“Delightful!”
“It’s… being hosted by Fulvius Elbreth.”
“The theatre critic?” she asked, resisting the impulse to cast the invitations away like poisonous snakes.
“The same.”
“But Roy… don’t you know what he is? What he stands for?” She shivered. “What he stands against?”
“Oh, I know. But Irving Properties, Inc. donated to the Tribune, and… well, no good deed goes unpunished. They’re thanking all the donors with a party.”
Suddenly cold, Docia got up to retrieve her Japanese silk robe from where it lay on the floor of his penthouse, crumpled, like a flower after a rainstorm. “Oh, Roy,” she said, shrugging into it, “I don’t know. The man is…”
“I know. Which is why I’m begging you not to make me go alone.”
“Don’t go at all!”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” She stood with her legs straight and apart, as if braced to withstand some impact, chin defiantly thrust forward. “What is stopping you?”
“It’s all part of being businessmen—forgive me, businesspeople.” He bowed. Ordinarily, she would have smiled, but the specter of Fulvius Elbreth had made her somber. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.”
“But to be seen with Fulvius Elbreth! To lend him and his ideas credit with your presence! Don’t you remember him, from the city council meeting? He was the most vocal advocate of that statue of ‘Justice,’ the one you and I agreed was a mockery of the very idea!”
“I remember, but—”
“Roy, the man once said, under the guise of reviewing Hamlet, that America would be better off as an imperial dynasty. Why? Because a king relies on his subjects, and thus feels beholden to them, will work to help them better themselves—but elected officials only rely on businesspeople, who in turn rely on no one, and thus feel beholden to help no one but their bottom line.” She shook her head, sending her tumbled locks tumbling in all directions. “A man who thinks a king’s whimsical largesse—the returning of amorphous favors—is better for the world than someone like me? Someone who pays my workers a fair wage for the work they do—a wage meaning money, the best, most objective indicator of approval anyone can give another human? What sort of man cares for patronage over fairness? I cannot—no, I will not make small talk with someone who believes such… dangerous nonsense.”
“Not even for me?”
She hesitated. She was not used to hesitating—to hesitate was to feel uncertainty, and she had always known what to do, and what was right, on both an instinctive level and a conscious one. It was right to be honest. To be forthright. To give her approval of only what should be approved. That Roy Irving, whom she had assumed shared her highest values, would ask her so casually to disavow them—and treat that disavowal as nothing, but a part of the cost of doing business… it troubled her, made her wonder if she had erred in agreeing to partner with this man, in any of the many ways that they had.
And yet, she felt her own will soften as he looked at her, his expression one of playful amusement. He was just a lover engaged in lover’s banter…
“All right,” she sighed.
“Think about it this way,” he said, slipping his hand under the collar of her robe, to grasp the flesh beneath. “It’s an opportunity to show Fulvius Elbreth that we’re better than kings.”
The city seemed yet darker the night of the party. The lights she could see from her office seemed fewer, dimmer. She gazed down at the city below, and shuddered, feeling a sense of unnamable dread. What, she wondered, did it mean? What might it foretell?
She shook her head. She might as well ask herself, have you found the Yellow Sign?
The answer would be the same.
Knowing she would not have time to go home, Docia had ordered her secretary to bring her dress to her office. With everything pressed and laid out, Docia mixed herself a Manhattan and began to change.
Usually, Docia’s office was where she felt most comfortable, but that night, as she got herself ready, she turned on all the lights, feeling as if the darkness was leaking in around the windowpanes, reaching into her very heart. She found she wished she’d told Louise to fetch her anything other than a little black dress—Docia rarely wore color, even for the gayest occasions, but that night, her selection seemed dreary.
She had just fastened the clasp of her necklace when Roy knocked. Startled, she cried out, turning too quickly and knocking over the Manhattan. The crystal shattered into jagged stars as the burgundy fluid soaked into the rug. She swore, reaching for something to mop it all up.
“You alright?” Roy asked, finding her on her hands and knees.
“I spilled my drink when you knocked. I guess I’m a little on edge.”
“Funny, you never seemed like the type to be frightened of a party,” he teased, helping her to her feet and then helping her heavy black pea coat. Two princess seams running down the back, cinching the waist ever so slightly, were the garment’s only concession to femininity. “How can a woman so comfortable in a boardroom be uncomfortable in a living room? We’ll laugh about it later, you know.”
“Of course. It’s just… haven’t you noticed? The city, I mean?”
It was the first time she had spoken to him about it. He looked at her strangely, and though the room was warm she felt a chill. He obviously had not noticed anything amiss.
Was it the city? Or was it her?
“It must just be the shorter days,” she said, as lightly as she could.
He relaxed. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I always feel a bit down in the autumn. But, a few bad drinks and some small talk with the moochers and the looters ought to cheer us up, don’t you think? Come, let us go be despised by those who do less in a month than we do in a day. And then later,” he whispered something in her ear that certainly gave her something to look forward to.
She needed it. The party was not fun. It was full of the sort of self-proclaimed intellectual she instinctively despised, women in heavy eyeliner with artistic pretensions and too many necklaces; men with moist, flabby lips and badly-cut double breasted suits. They spoke of politics and art as if they knew anything about either.
For as long as possible, Docia floated amongst these people, saying as little as possible and trying to listen less. Really, she was most concerned with avoiding Fulvius Elbreth. She knew him from his picture in the Trib, though in real life his chin was weaker. Unlike her, he was clearly in his element, enjoying everyone’s company, listening to what they had to say and responding with his own delightfully pithy bons mots, as light and frothy as egg white on a Ramos Gin Fizz—and just as insubstantial.
She was refreshing her drink at the bar when she overheard the critic remark that abstraction was the only acceptable form of artistic expression in the modern age. In spite of herself, she ambled over, curious to hear what he had to say on the matter.
“Representational art is pure arrogance,” he said to a group of vapid-looking men and women. “The act of representing a thing is to claim one knows a thing, and nothing is knowable. Only in abstraction can we truly show reality; only when we admit our own lack of rationality can we approach a subject with any real intelligence.”
Docia was the only one not nodding her agreement. He noticed.
“You disagree?” His tone was lighthearted, but she could feel the insincerity behind it.
“I’m not sure I even understand what you mean,” she said. “Plenty of things are knowable.”
“Like what?”
She silently cursed herself for engaging with him. What had she been thinking? Her sole hope for the party h
ad been to get away without being introduced to her host, and yet here she was.
“Like… this drink.” She held it aloft. “It is bourbon. In a glass.”
“But—forgive me—neither you, while beautiful, nor that bourbon, while tasty, are art.” He smiled. She did not return the expression. “Now, if I were watching a play, and you appeared, bourbon in hand, and had this conversation with my character… why, how realistic it would be! Two individuals having a conversation at a party, how natural! How representational! But what would it mean?”
“It would mean we were having a conversation.”
“Ah—but why? To what end? If we were having this conversation, but upon the stage, the audience would wonder what my motivation is for saying what I am saying—for beginning the conversation at all, really. They’d consider how what I wore, what I drank, and most especially what I said illuminated my character—and they would analyze how your reaction revealed your own. But, of course, all real people contain multitudes. No author can truly represent a person; that is why I say it is arrogant to pretend it is possible. But, an abstraction… that is a different matter. Through abstraction, we are able to nestle closer to the truth, for abstraction deals with ideas rather than realities.”
“That’s ridiculous,” declared Docia, ignoring the snickers and titters of the group. “I’m sorry, but I can’t share in your nihilism.”
Elbreth snapped his fingers. “We’ve met before,” he said. “I remember you, from that meeting with the mayor. You hated the new statue of Justice, claimed it was a travesty to erect anything other than a blind woman with scales and sword.”
“Justice is blindfolded, for She is objective. Justice carries a sword, double-edged to represent reason and justice. Her scales show us that cases will be weighed. To replace those symbols with something else, something lesser, impugns everyone employed by the city, and does nothing to reassure suppliants who go there seeking fair treatment. That thing you endorsed doesn’t say anything to anyone about what really goes on inside a courtroom!”
“I didn’t realize there was really a goddess incarnate living at 60 Centre Street.” Elbreth chuckled. “Or is it possible your darling Lady Justice is also… an abstraction?”
Docia stalked off, as embarrassed as she was furious. She was not accustomed to being verbally outfenced, especially by those who spoke glibly of their dislike of reason and their abandonment of rationality. He had known what she meant, but twisted her words to mean something else—the hallmark of the second-rater. A thing was what it was, and to claim otherwise was to deny reason and logic; or, in other words, the faculties that distinguished humans from animals—what gave mankind purpose, and for that matter, culture.
These thoughts comforted her, but she still needed some air, to get away from these people. Not seeing Roy anywhere in the crowd, she headed for the balcony. Another woman was out there, smoking a cigarette. Docia nodded politely, but otherwise ignored her as she stared down at the city below.
Was it just her imagination, or was it even dimmer than before she had entered Fulvius Elbreth’s apartment? The stars were still masked by flat cloudbanks, invisible, obscure, far away. It occurred to her that she could not recall the last time she had seen them…
She sighed, leaning against the balcony. If only she’d been thinking faster, she would have suggested Elbreth come out with her, put his weight against the balustrade, testing its truth—it would hold, whether he believed it would, or not. And even if he personally felt an abstraction of a banister was more valuable, especially on the stage, Juliet would likely feel more secure with a railing designed by man, and forged of iron, between her and Romeo.
“Don’t let them bother you.”
“I beg your pardon?” Docia turned to face the small woman beside her. The first thing she noticed were the woman’s eyes, huge and dark and expressive. As to what they expressed, it was intense determination, a single-mindedness of purpose Docia immediately admired. Her confident posture, sensible, side-parted bob and tailored suit gave Docia confidence that she was standing with someone who would not tolerate any nonsense.
“I said, don’t let them bother you. They are beneath your notice.” She had a clipped, aristocratic accent when she spoke. Docia couldn’t identify it, but she thought it might be European. “Their goals are not yours.”
“I suppose not.”
“You are a businesswoman. A creator. Creators think.” Her darkly-lipsticked mouth contorted around the butt of a half-smoked cigarette; she blew out smoke, and smiled. “They are independent, they follow their own reason to the end. Critics… they are not creators. They are destroyers. No—they are less than destroyers, for a destroyer must possess the will to destroy, which means possessing purpose. They—those in there, I mean—are mere grave-worms. They feast on that which is already dead.”
Docia was a little uncomfortable with this bold speech. While she admired the woman’s convictions, both the content and the way she delivered them, her familiarity was a little disturbing. She spoke as if she and Docia had been friends for a long time, whereas to the best of Docia’s knowledge, she’d never seen the woman before in her life.
“Have we met?” asked Docia. “I’m sorry if I don’t recall, but…”
“I know who you are—what you do. I know why you needed air after being in there, with those people. Would you like a cigarette?”
“I would love a cigarette,” said Docia, and accepted one from the woman’s pack. They were of a type she had never seen before, she didn’t recognize the package, but upon inhaling the smoke Docia declared it was the most delicious cigarette she’d ever tasted.
“Yes,” was the woman’s only response, and finishing her own, she flicked the butt off the balcony. As it fluttered away in the breeze, the strangely yellow ember was the brightest light for miles.
“It seems darker, don’t you think? The city, I mean,” said Docia. For some reason, she felt this woman, strange though she was, would understand.
“Darker? Yes… it is.” The woman turned to Docia, who felt as if she might drown in those starless pools. “Do you know why?”
“No…” Docia felt a queer prickling at the back of her neck. “Do you?”
“Me?” The woman laughed. “What’s the fashionable expression? Have you found the Yellow Sign?”
Docia, perturbed, did not reply, turned back to the city. From behind her, the woman said, “Well, I must be off. Good night, sleep tight… and don’t let the grave-worms bite…”
Docia whirled as she heard the door open, for she wished to ask the woman what brand of cigarette she had been smoking—but she had disappeared. To her displeasure, Fulvius Elbreth now stood where she should have been.
“Ms. Calder,” he said, far more serious than he had been inside. “I owe you an apology. It was unkind of me to speak so freely, and in a group. I allowed my enthusiasm to override my manners. As a host, it was most unpardonable.”
Docia was in no mood to be wooed by an apology, however well-phrased. After her conversation with the woman, she saw something distinctly wormlike about this Fulvius Elbreth.
“To my mind, your rudeness is far more pardonable than your views,” she said evenly.
He stared at her, clearly at a loss for words. After a long moment, he laughed awkwardly. “Well… there’s no accounting for taste, eh? But, I do admire your… passion for the arts, I suppose. It’s too bad… I had rather hoped…” He hesitated, then turned to the door. “Perhaps I had better leave you be?”
His manner made her curious. “What had you hoped?”
“That you might accompany me to the theatre. Yes, I know you came here with that meathead Irving, I’m not asking you on a date. Just to come with me. There’s a new play on Broadway, one that caused quite a scandal in Europe, where it was banned. A theatre-owner here invited the production, after hearing about it all, and well… at last the Trib feels I should go review it.”
“At last?”
“The play has a rather dodgy reputation—a blinkered history, if you will. I had to convince my editor it was a good idea for me to go. But I did, in the end. I can be very persuasive.”
“Beware that overconfidence. You haven’t convinced me yet.”
“No?”
“Why should you ask me?”
He shrugged. “Because taking a lady to the theatre seemed a gentlemanlike way of apologizing. Because you have opinions on art that intrigue me, even if I disagree with them, and discussing them over dinner seems pleasant.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Well… all right.”
“Good!” Elbreth clapped his hands together. “I’ll make dinner reservations. Thank you, Ms. Calder, you’ve made my night… by making me feel less of a cad. Tomorrow, then?”
“Yes, I’ll… let’s meet in front of your office, you’re closer.”
“Perfect.”
“One more thing… who was that woman? Who was out here with me?”
Elbreth shrugged. “I couldn’t say. I didn’t see her.”
He took his leave of her, and Docia finished her cigarette. It was really the best she’d ever had. Before she ground it out she looked at the butt, just to see if she could ascertain the brand. There was no name, just a strange, unrecognizable insignia, in yellow so bright it might have been painted on in real gold. Docia hesitated, then tapped out the remaining tobacco, pocketing the butt. She’d show it to the man at the drugstore to see if he could identify it. She was eager to find the brand so she could buy a pack of her own.
Roy was unimpressed to hear that Elbreth would be escorting Docia to the theatre. They had a stupid fight about it on their way home. He made it clear he disapproved of her being taken out by other men, even after she made it clear that there was nothing in the world less romantic to her mind than going out with Fulvius Elbreth. He was not reassured, and drove along in a petulant silence that made her yet again question the wisdom of their alliance. She had never yet slept with someone she did not hold in the highest regard. It was therefore something of a relief when his reply to her remark that jealousy was a sign of low self-regard was that it was likely better if they kept their relationship professional in future.
