The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  She was still warming up to the notion that her guest was not only Malcolm but Sir Malcolm when the first of the brothers arrived and loudly boomed, “Michael!” Before the confusion could be cleared up another brother arrived and again it was “Michael!” That name echoed faintly in her mind until the woman standing with the black-haired brother called the redheaded brother Francis—and she thought of the list from the psychic and it was all coming true. Francis. Michael. Two of the names the real Eudoxia had spoken in her trance. With a shock, she thought of Michael’s headlong rush from the elevated train to the building where the Foundation was housed—the tower, another item on the list, and the very spot where she had looked west and dreamed of California. And now she found herself in this hotel, and what had she called it when Michael sketched it? A castle. The Tower and the Castle, her shorthand with Josef.

  It could all be a coincidence—of course it could—but already an icy chill tingled her scalp, and the hairs on her arm stood straight even in this turgid evening heat. She couldn’t say a word about it to this roomful of strangers. It would only make her appear to be the crazy woman who had taken such good care of Malcolm—no, Michael. But she knew that if the other brother or the man by the window, who had entered with the redhead, turned out to be George, then she would faint, or shriek. If Eudoxia had been right about these names pulled from the ether, then was that proof that she was also right about the only question that Lilly had actually asked and which had been answered so definitively with a string of nos?

  Just as Michael’s brothers turned their attention to Lilly, the concierge bustled into the suite with two bottles of champagne icing in chrome-plated buckets and enough glasses for the ever-growing party. Collier wrapped a cloth napkin around the neck of the first bottle and decorously uncorked it—a faint pop—and when he unwrapped the linen, a syrupy white fog flowed from the bottle’s mouth. He was just as deft with introductions, presenting the Countess Eudoxia Rothschild to Sir Angus MacFarquhar with all due ceremony.

  “And this is Fitzwilliam,” Sir Angus said, making way for his brother.

  “Oh,” Lilly said. “I was expecting George.”

  “He arrives tomorrow,” Martin said. “Angus here can tell you all about it.”

  Collier filled the remaining glasses and again took his leave. It wouldn’t be proper to linger while the guests toasted their good fortune.

  As the door soundlessly closed, Rosemary stepped forward. She had not been introduced, and God knows what name Francis might have stuck her with. “Eudoxia,” she said. “What a lovely name.”

  “Please, it’s Lilly. I only told him that so I wouldn’t be the only commoner in the room. A joke of sorts. I apologize if that offends you.”

  Rosemary laughed. “There’s not a drop of royal blood anywhere in this room. We’re all putting on airs tonight.”

  “Before we have any more confessions,” Martin said, “let’s drink this bubbly before it loses its fizz.” Around the room, glasses were raised and Martin prepared to offer a few words.

  “Hold on, Your Lordship,” Francis said. “Won’t you join us, Mr. Cronin?”

  The others—giddy, rosy-faced, happy as lottery winners—turned to the man at the window.

  “No, thanks.” His voice came out fully Corkonian: No, tanks. Thanks being one of those words he hadn’t used often enough in America, and so it was stored in his voice box just the way he’d grown up using it. “I think I’ll stretch my legs.”

  It was only a few steps from the window to the door, but it felt like miles. Bad enough to have all of the Dempsey brothers together, but there was the oldest one’s wife, too. The one he’d seen on the sidewalk in the Bronx with her two little lambs, the baby in her arms and the little girl yammering away about who knows what, just like his Henry. Whether or not Francis was able to carry off the plan, what would this woman lose? Her brother-in-law an assassin, or would-be assassin, reviled in the papers, and herself and the husband implicated in the plot: Hadn’t they hosted the brother just a week before? Or else her husband dead or disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Or would Gavigan carry through on the promise to burn down the whole family?

  Yesterday at the garage, as the plan had festered and bloomed, Cronin had asked that Jamie, “Would he really do it? The missus of the older one, too?”

  Jamie had fixed him with that cold eye, dead black from the pupil through the iris. He had sneered—apparently Cronin did have a short memory—before he spoke. “It wouldn’t be the first time a wife got rubbed, now, would it?”

  Cronin paused at the door and fixed Francis with a look. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “Before.” He let that word hang there, a reminder of what Francis had to do, and for whose benefit—not for Gavigan, but for the people in this room.

  Cronin skipped the elevator now and took the stairs, his feet stutter-stepping all the way down. He emerged in a corridor that led him to the lobby, brightly lit and full of people enjoying a summer night. He would let the Dempseys have their fun, a last night to look back on, but he wanted no part of it: the fancy dress and the laughter of carefree people and the black cars shimmering by the curb. He pushed his way through the doors before the men in braided caps and coats could do the job for him and then he was crossing the street, looking neither right nor left but holding his hand extended, palm out, a stop sign any cabbie would be a fool to ignore. His feet propelled him into the park and it wasn’t until he was beneath the trees and away from the path, his feet chuffing over the grass, that he let himself breathe.

  Seven stories above his head, the Dempseys were raising their glasses in celebration, together and happy because they had cheated fate by snatching Michael from the maw of death. The boy had been saved before, by not being in his mother’s arms that morning when she started the car and the wires sparked and flesh and machine were both torn apart. And if Francis was to be believed, then it had happened a second time, when the blast at the farmhouse knocked the senses out of him but did not take his life. And now he had been lost in the ravenous city and had emerged none the worse for it. You could think he was the most star-crossed of the bunch. Unlucky, that one. But you could also say he was charmed: death had tried and tried again to get its bony hands on Michael, and he had managed to give it the slip every time. Now he would have one more test of his good fortune—for his family to be pitted against Gavigan and the bastard’s mad plan to set fire to the world. As for Cronin, he would have one more night in the room with the half-painted chair.

  “WHO WAS THAT?” Rosemary said.

  “Ah, he’s no one,” Francis said, raising his glass to start another round of toasts to Michael’s health. “A mate of his helped me out in Mountjoy, and I promised I’d return the favor. But that’s all been sorted.”

  Now that Michael was safe, Martin was eager to get the full story of his disappearance from Francis—the stakes were lower, the question of culpability no longer a life-or-death matter—but not tonight. He didn’t want to be the one to cast a shadow over the celebration. He thought of Sunday at the apartment, how happy they had all been, and how quickly it had unraveled. Now they were being given a second chance, and just like on Sunday they toasted their good fortune with champagne. Twice in a week, and this time at the Plaza? Things were definitely looking up. Tonight they would live like Rockefellers. Tomorrow, at Peggy’s reception, he would play for John Hammond, and the world would see how high Martin could rise. He would get to the bottom of this business with Francis and his shady acquaintances another day.

  BY THIS TIME tomorrow, Francis knew, his life, and the entire world, would be overwhelmed by his bloody deed. He didn’t want to kill anyone but that was the only fixed point in this whole mess: Someone had to die. If not the king, then himself and his brothers and Rosemary and God knows who else. In this moment, in the suite, with the drinks flowing and the fake countess and Martin and Rosemary taking in the view from the window, Francis was happy just to have Michael back. Hadn’t h
e prayed for exactly this? His life for Michael’s? God had listened to his plea and returned his brother to him—but, working in mysterious ways and all, He had left Michael’s life hanging in the balance. But tomorrow, the job would be done, his debt paid, his family safe. No one would understand why, but he would know, and that would have to be enough. As for tonight, he would keep everyone blissfully ignorant. If these were to be the last happy hours they spent together, he wasn’t going to be the one to call an end to the party.

  Not for the first time, Francis wondered if he would leave the fairgrounds alive. The thought did not chill him. After all, that would be the easiest way to bring an end to everything. He had weighed the gun in his hand, had wondered how many bullets he would need for the king, and whether there would be any left for himself.

  EVERY TIME THE door opened, Michael saw pieces of this past week falling into place. First it was Francis and the man with whom he’d left the museum. Then it was Martin and Rosemary, full of tears and smiles. He half expected to see the doctor and his chessboards or the blonde—Rosemary’s friend? her sister?—whom he’d last seen leaving the hotel in the wee hours of the morning. He was still accompanied by his most generous host, the photographer, who was packing her flat for a move to some unknown location—unknown to him, though not to her. Surely, she knew where she was going.

  They had all raised their glasses and Michael’s head was rubbed and his arm squeezed and his back slapped and everyone smoked and laughed and his host, who was now his guest, seemed to be getting on very well with his family.

  His family. It was as he’d said to Yeats: I am a family man and I want to be with my family. In Ireland, family had eventually meant only his father and then a constellation of mementos left by those who had departed. In place of his mother, he had one photograph and a mantel clock purchased during a trip his parents had taken to Paris long before he was born. From Martin, there were letters containing little more than the stilted well wishes of a man who had left the country when Michael was only seven. And from Francis, Michael had a different sort of letters, first reporting the high life in Dublin and then the view from his prison cell. The only fixed, living, breathing presence had been his father, and now his father was gone. Buried under the soil of Ballyrath for good, and Michael hadn’t even been there to see the box lowered into the ground; hadn’t thrown his handful of dirt and properly laid his father to rest.

  Here in America, his family had reconstituted itself: he had Francis and Martin and Rosemary and the two girls. But for all the joys this reunion had brought, and would bring, he knew that he had left more than his senses behind in Ireland. He had left a piece of himself, and it would forever haunt the church where his father was buried, and where Eileen had said I do.

  LILLY SHOULD HAVE spent more of her time in America with Americans, she decided, because these Americans—Francis and Martin and Rosemary and, of course, Michael—were absolutely charming. But then, they weren’t Americans, were they? Not Francis or Michael, who had only just arrived from Ireland. And Martin had spent almost ten years in America, but that wasn’t enough to make him into an American, was it? So Rosemary—she was an American. And Rosemary was charming.

  They sat on the sofa, the two women, while the Dempsey brothers, who had moved on to Scotch and soda, drank and talked and looked out the window.

  “And where is home?” Rosemary said.

  “Prague.” Lilly said it matter-of-factly, following up the city’s name with a plume of smoke.

  “Prague is dangerous since the occupation, isn’t it?” Rosemary no longer read four newspapers a day, but she did read one. She hadn’t given up completely on her old habits.

  “Well, of course.” Lilly shrugged and raised one eyebrow, an expression that was either resigned or noncommittal—even she wasn’t sure. “But we hope for the best.”

  Rosemary was about to formulate another question—Yes, but didn’t I just read—when she realized that Lilly was deflecting already and that additional questions would seem more like badgering than concern. That shrug, her hope for the best, made it clear she was bracing herself for a world Rosemary would never know.

  Lilly was trying to keep the conversation light. In the past week, she hadn’t spoken the word Prague to anyone but Mr. Crabtree and Madame Eudoxia, but here was someone who seemed reasonably informed and more than reasonably compassionate. But what could she say to Rosemary? I’m a Jew and a maker of decadent art. My fiancé is a Jew and a communist. We make such a lovely couple. What could possibly go wrong?

  Not for the first time, she noticed Martin gazing over at Rosemary. He watched her profile as she sipped champagne, a smile playing over his lips. “Don’t move when I tell you this, but your husband keeps looking at you. It’s very nice.”

  “I think he’s shocked to see me out of the apartment, without any children, dressed up for once. He’s probably asking himself, Who is this woman? She reminds me of my wife.”

  “It’s nice. He’s seeing you as you are.”

  “That’s very kind,” Rosemary said.

  “It’s true,” Lilly said. “The next time he does it, I’m going to take his picture, to prove it to you.”

  “If he does it again.”

  “Oh, he will.” Lilly raised the camera from her lap, cradling it near her shoulder. “How long have you been married?”

  “It was four years in February.”

  “And do you still look at him like that?”

  “When I remember to.” Rosemary thought again of that kiss outside the chapel: the memory was being put to double duty this week. She and Martin needed more of those moments. “But if you’re asking me if I still love my husband, then the answer is yes.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “I’m joking,” Rosemary said. “Not about loving Martin—but sometimes I try to have fun and it comes out wrong. My mother says I don’t know how to talk to people.”

  “Your mother sounds…”

  “Yes,” Rosemary said. “She sounds exactly like that.”

  In one fluid movement, Lilly raised the camera and snapped a shot of Martin: the window behind him, gauzy with evening light, his hand cradling the glass, his eyes drawn again to Rosemary.

  “What’s that about?” he said from across the room.

  “I’m calling that one The Good Husband,” Lilly said for all to hear.

  Rosemary made a show of smooching her hand and blowing the kiss toward Martin. “Have fun with your brothers. It’s strictly girl talk over here.”

  Martin, who had begun to make his way toward Rosemary in a sort of mock foxtrot, performed a quick U-turn back to the window.

  From the bar cart behind the sofa, Lilly took the Scotch bottle and poured a splash into her wineglass. “Can I ask you a question?” She sipped the Scotch and continued. “If you had to choose between yourself and your husband, who would you choose?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I also don’t know how to talk to people,” Lilly said. “But if you had to choose between the man you love, on one side, and on the other was your own life and all that you had worked for—how would you do that?”

  Rosemary stared at Lilly, trying to untangle the question. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know what you’re asking.”

  “Never mind it,” Lilly said. “I don’t even know what I’m asking.”

  “I know that I’d never leave Martin,” she said. “I made a vow, but also I—I’d never do that.”

  “But what if you were already apart?” Lilly put one hand over her eyes, her head bowed. She could not look at this woman, who had made a vow, while she spoke. “What if you were on one side of a river—a dark, fast-moving river—and he was on the other, and you knew that the only way to see him was to jump in and try to swim?”

  Rosemary extended her hand, placed it on Lilly’s knee. She leaned in closer. “Is someone waiting for you at home?”

  “Yes. Or no. Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She reached for her
purse, though she knew there was no handkerchief—nothing but a list of things to do, a list of one medium’s nonsense. Rosemary unwound the linen from the neck of the wine bottle and handed it to Lilly, who dabbed her eyes. “These last days have—have not been easy.”

  “But you’re leaving soon?” Rosemary said. “So you’ll see him before too long?”

  “If I go.” It was the first time Lilly had given voice to the thought, and now it was out there. She was willing to betray love, and she had admitted it to this bright and hopeful American, who had made a vow, who would never leave her husband. “Prague is bad, and it will get worse. Everyone knows it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way. The papers say—”

  “It doesn’t have to, but it will. It’s a fact.”

  From the window came a burst of laughter. Martin—or Francis? It was incredible to Rosemary how much they sounded alike. She had noticed on Sunday that the Dempsey brothers all had the same walk.

  “Lilly, what I said, about Martin. That was about me. You have your own life, your own—”

  “You say so, and he says so, too. But what does that make me?” She took Rosemary’s hand in hers. Her grip was fierce, her eyes glistened. “Who abandons love?”

  Another howl of laughter from the brothers was followed by Francis loudly proclaiming that if he did not eat soon, he would be forced to roast Michael over an open fire on the roof of the hotel. He was ravenous, he said, and little Michael was looking like a pullet ready to be plucked. The truth was, his thoughts of tomorrow and what he must do to keep these people—his favorites in all the world—safe from harm made him desperate for a final send-off, a last supper. In the movies, even a condemned man got to choose his final meal.