The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  WHEN HE RETURNED to the suite, Francis was surprised to find Miss Bloch pouring a cup of coffee from a cart in the middle of the room.

  She was about to apologize for ordering room service, but when she took in Francis—the kilt, the Prince Charlie coatee, the sporran—she had to stifle a laugh. “You look very… Scottish,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I think the point of the outfit is to humiliate you in the presence of your betters.”

  “It’s very nice,” she said. “But your brothers will never forgive me—my camera is in the other room.”

  “Must be my lucky day,” Francis said.

  Strangers to each other, they moved about uncomfortably: half-smiles, stutter steps, too many sips of coffee. Last night, with the room more crowded, had been easier. But now Francis’s heart was full of the things he must do; he wanted no distractions. Lilly’s heart was torn between being the person she wanted to be and the one she knew she was. Where Francis wanted to move, to be done with it, Lilly wanted never to move and for nothing ever to change.

  “It was kind of you to let me stay,” she said. “With such a day in store, you must have hoped for a good night’s sleep.”

  “It was grand,” he said. “Though Michael does kick in his sleep.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “He does.”

  Francis gave her a quizzical look, but she only poured another cup of coffee and walked to the window overlooking the park. Francis took the opportunity to steal into his bedroom, where Michael’s outline was visible under the sheets. Francis closed the door and from the writing desk withdrew an envelope. He filled it with most of the cash from the sporran—close to five hundred dollars, he figured—along with the list of doctors provided by Van Hooten and the sheet from Van Hooten’s typewriter. He had a fresh sheet of paper with the Plaza’s crest at the top, and paused to consider what, if anything, he could write to Martin that would explain what had happened and why. He could name this Gavigan, but what good would that do for Martin? It would only invite the man’s wrath, which was exactly what Francis was acting to prevent. The word evidence echoed. Even if Martin was smart enough to keep the money for himself, would the letter become an exhibit in the reconstruction of this crime? In the end, he wrote, Not for myself but for all of you. I hope you can understand. He could think of nothing else. He folded the sheet and added it to the envelope, sealed the flap, and wrote MARTIN in blue letters across the front.

  YEATS STOOD NEAR the bedroom door, watching Michael sleep. He saw no reason to wake the boy. He’d had some foolish idea of saying farewell—not that it was necessary, not that the boy would even want to. Hadn’t Michael told him to sod off? So he would let him sleep. The boy certainly needed it, after all that had happened and all that was to come. Yeats himself was tired, his face drawn and his clothes rumpled. On unsteady legs he approached the bed and sat on the edge, near Michael’s feet. He tried to cross one leg over the other but couldn’t find the proper way to arrange his limbs.

  Eternity like a tide was drawing him away. He saw now that he had tried for too long to maintain a hold on the material world. He had wanted to contact George, to speak across the divide of death, but George and his writings about the spiritus mundi and even art itself—now all of that was just shipwrecked pieces of a life that had run aground. He could cling to the wreckage or he could release himself into the arms of the ocean. All time tended toward the eternal. All divisions—days, years, centuries—dissolved into a never-ending present. He could feel the pull. He needed only to relinquish his grip.

  Michael stirred, his eyes slowly opening. “Mr. Yeats,” he said, stifling a yawn. “I hoped I’d see—”

  Yeats held a finger to his lips, then pointed across the room in the direction of the curtained window. Francis sat at the desk, a lapful of plaid spilling over his chair. Michael slid out from under the sheets and padded across the thick carpet toward his brother, who was consumed in the act of writing, folding, sealing. Michael peered over his shoulder and saw an envelope on the desk marked with the word MARTIN.

  Francis spun in his chair. “Jaysus Christ!” he said. “Don’t sneak up on a fella, will you!”

  Michael’s eyes were fixed on the envelope, on his brother’s jagged-peaked M and A, the crooked slashes of his T, I, and N. He jabbed a finger at the envelope and tapped loudly, twice.

  “What is it?” Francis bent his elbows, palms up and out: the universal sign of the interrogative.

  Michael snatched the pen from the desk and bent to the task. At a deliberate pace, he wrote Francis beneath the first name, then Michael beneath the second. The letters were shaky and poorly formed, but legible.

  Francis stood and pulled a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer and placed it on the blotter. He wrote, Can you read this? and handed the pen to Michael, who nodded vigorously. Triumphant, Francis pressed his brother to his chest. Michael recoiled; he’d been poked by one of the buckles on Francis’s regalia, but stepping back for a good look at his brother, he could only laugh—a choking, snorting sort of laugh.

  The clock next to the bed told Francis that he was already late but he didn’t want to go, not now. A minute ago he’d been ready to commit to this awful day. But here was proof that Michael was becoming Michael again. A thought flashed—What if we just ran for it?—but that was impossible. Even if he and Michael could disappear, they could never get Martin and Rosemary and the girls to follow.

  Who was he willing to sacrifice to save his own skin? No one.

  He put his hands on Michael’s shoulders to get a last look at him. The two brothers smiled at each other. Michael was giddy as a puppy, his features loose and lively. Francis knew if he dropped his smile, his whole face was likely to crumble.

  I have to go, he wrote.

  Where?

  To meet the king.

  King of what?

  Long story. going w/ girl from the park.

  Shouldn’t she wear the skirt?

  Francis boxed him playfully on the shoulder. This was the Michael who had fled with him from Ballyrath. Frank and Jesse James, on the run from the posse.

  Francis picked up the pen. I have to go. I’m sorry.

  Sorry for?

  Everything.

  As Michael puzzled over this, Francis put a hand on his shoulder. He tightened his grip, felt his brother’s bones and the warmth of his skin, radiant from sleep and the sheets and the morning heat. Michael was real, was returned. Every day he would come closer to his old self. He thought again of his prayer, his life for Michael’s.

  Before he left the suite, he asked Miss Bloch for one last favor: Once Michael was dressed, could she put him in a cab with this envelope, to be delivered to Martin and Rosemary? Their address—now where did he put their address?—but Lilly waved him off; Rosemary had given it to her the night before. She would put Michael in the cab, but was he sure that it was safe? Michael alone had not had good results.

  “He can read,” Francis said. “I don’t know how or why, but suddenly he can read and write again. He’s a new man. Or he’s becoming the old one. I wish I could stay, but—” He looked at his hands, helpless. “And I’m sorry to impose, but he needs to be out of the hotel within the hour—as do you. And as a token of our thanks, for all you’ve done, I’d like you to have this.” He handed her the rest of the money: two hundred and fifty, perhaps three hundred dollars.

  She looked at the stack of bills as if he’d handed her the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle.

  “It’s far less than you deserve, but I hope it helps with your travels. Bon voyage.”

  “Forgive me,” she said. Francis was acting so strange: dressed like a Highland groom, unable to stand still, speaking a hundred miles an hour, telling her Michael could read and write, and now this handful of dollars. “But I don’t understand.”

  “It will all make sense, but right now you have an hour to get far, far from this place.”

  “That sounds ominous,” she said lightly. After all, everythi
ng he had said last night sounded like a joke.

  “It’s meant to.” And with that he was out the door.

  MICHAEL PULLED BACK the drapes and let the morning sun stream into the bedroom. The bed linens blazed white, but Yeats remained a smudgy half-gray. He sat hunched, his elbows on his knees.

  “Did you see that?” Michael said. “The letters didn’t move. I could read them, simple as that.”

  Yeats rubbed his hands together, contemplative, then pushed himself to his feet, his back to Michael.

  “Did you see, Mr. Yeats? You’ve no need for a medium now. If you want to write a letter to your wife—”

  Yeats turned, his eyes deep and blank, framed by the black weight of his spectacles. He slowly opened his mouth.

  “No, no, no!” Michael saw it before he heard it. He backpedaled toward the window and stumbled over a pair of shoes. Windmilling his arms, his balance gone, he hit the window hard enough to crack it. His head rapped against the mullion; his elbow punctured the pane.

  Yeats opened his mouth and the Noise poured out of him. Michael wrenched his elbow back through the glass and pressed both hands to his ears. He was aware of the sudden pain in his arm, sharp and hot and sticky, but it was a sideshow. The main event was the machine drilling through his skull, squealing and grinding through bone and brain pulp. The floor shifted and he heaved himself forward, away from the window, as Yeats raised one hand in warning or farewell, and then the poet was gone and in his place was his host, the woman who had rescued him once before, and he had time only to register the shock on her face before the blackness came all around him and he pitched toward the blazing mass of the bed.

  GRAMERCY PARK

  BAGMAN. THE TRUTH OF it had stung, coming from Dempsey’s mouth. Cronin was a delivery boy. He had helped to deliver Francis Dempsey to his doom and now he was toting a sack of money to Gavigan. How was that for being on the right side? How was that for being a good man? Once he was done with Gavigan he would find his way home and try to look Alice in the eye, but it wouldn’t be easy. She’d say she was glad to have him back but who—what—was she getting?

  All down the avenue from Midtown to Gavigan’s place, the lampposts and the awnings were festooned with flags: Union Jacks on every corner, and the royals wouldn’t even see them. The parade was to be up the West Side Highway and the papers said there would be hundreds of thousands lining the route. If it had been twenty years earlier, and the king’s father had been fool enough to visit Ireland, and Frank Dempsey had given him the word? And if Bernadette had told him it would advance the cause, that it would put England on the back foot? Of course Cronin would have done it, and with no more animus than when he shot a police inspector. But it wasn’t twenty years ago, it wasn’t Ireland, and Gavigan’s reasons were a poor substitute for the Dempseys’. The Americans had had their war with another King George—hadn’t they called him a tyrant, too?—but that was history and now they waved flags and roses for the king. Some histories you washed off quickly. Others you wallowed in like a sty.

  Cronin found a place for the car on the far side of Gramercy Park, where the low iron gate separated him from a riot of rhododendron and azalea, flocks of bearded iris. He caught the wet smell of the earth, of mulched bark: a reminder that a better world existed somewhere. He should have used the back entrance to the brownstone, but Gavigan had gone out of his way to expose Cronin, so why shouldn’t he return the favor? The small, petty defiance of a man who has been beaten and knows it. With the bag at his side, Cronin rang the bell and Helen, the Jane-of-all-trades, opened the door.

  “Well, if it isn’t our bad penny,” she said. “You keep turning up.”

  “This’ll be the last time,” he said. “I need to see him and then I’m off.”

  She beckoned for Cronin to follow her down the carpeted hall. She was a stout woman, built like a coffeepot. “The two of them have been in the study all morning listening to the radio.” She stopped when she came to the door. “You don’t suppose they’re waiting for the opera, do you?”

  Gavigan was behind the desk. Jamie leaned, arms folded, against the bookcase, like he had all the time in the world.

  “Come to join our party, Tommy?” Gavigan said. “I’ve got a nice bottle set aside for a toast, but not until we have a reason to celebrate. It could be a few hours still, and I know how you get thirsty. Think you can wait?”

  Cronin ignored the question and set the bag on the desk. “Here’s your money, or what’s left of it. Dempsey wasn’t exactly pinching pennies.”

  “A small price to pay,” Gavigan said. “They’ll be writing songs about him soon.”

  “Well, then,” Cronin said. “I’ll be on my way.”

  “What? So soon? We couldn’t have done this without you, Tommy. For all his charm, I don’t think Jamie would have had the patience to see Dempsey through all this. He was all for dumping him off a bridge days ago.”

  “I’m not the babysitting type,” Jamie said. “But I’m glad that someone is.”

  Gavigan barked a laugh that tripped into a manky, wet cough. He was practically giddy. His plan was coming together, bigger than any heist or hit in the old days. By nightfall, the world would be in an uproar. He would make clear to the Army Council just who had masterminded this operation—and wouldn’t that give them a shock! Of course they wouldn’t breathe a word of it. It was too easy to connect the dots and link Gavigan back to them, and who would believe that Gavigan alone had freelanced this entire operation, without the knowledge or consent of the IRA? No, they would be gobsmacked. Maybe now he would get the respect he deserved.

  “That’s right,” Gavigan said. “Tommy wants to get back to his farmer’s wife and his baby. You be sure to give them a kiss from their old uncle John.”

  Cronin had heard enough. He turned for the door.

  “I’ll tell you what, Tommy.” Gavigan reached for the satchel and came out with a wedge of banknotes. He peeled off bills like he was skinning a potato. “Here’s a little something extra for your troubles. Why don’t you buy that woman of yours something nice?” His laugh was croupy, malicious. He was the king of all jokes today. “Maybe a wedding ring? Make an honest woman of her, why don’tcha?”

  Cronin stopped, his hand on the doorknob. On the desk, Gavigan had laid out five hundred dollars in tens and twenties.

  “Oh, don’t be so sour. I’m just having a bit of fun.” He stacked the bills into a neat pile and then proffered it to Cronin. “Take it,” he said. “If you don’t want any gifts, then you can consider it a down payment for the next time.”

  Cronin’s left hand balled into a fist, the way it had in front of the farmhouse. “This is the end of it,” he said, as much to himself as to Gavigan.

  “It’s the end for now,” Gavigan said. “I know where to find you when I need you.”

  CRONIN WHEELED ON Gavigan with the revolver and fired, catching the old man in the neck. The wound was messy and Gavigan lingered only long enough to know that it was Cronin who had done it.

  Even as he was squeezing the trigger, Cronin knew that he should have shot Jamie first. That would have been the smart thing to do: take out the muscle. But he had let his temper get the better of him—Frank Dempsey would have had stern words for a lapse like that—and some small part of him must have thought that Jamie wanted to be free of Gavigan too.

  The bullet that struck Cronin’s shoulder announced that Jamie did not want to be free of all this. And the fact that the shot hit him in the shoulder rather than the head or the gut told him that Jamie, for all his vigilance, had been caught off guard. Before Jamie could fire a second time, Cronin pivoted and fired, practically point-blank, and sent him spinning face-first to the carpet. The Webley was a battlefield weapon. It rarely required a second shot.

  The pain came in hot, electric pulses down Cronin’s arm and into his chest, as if he were wrapped in burning barbed wire. In two strides he reached Jamie and kicked free his gun and then, with the same foot, he rolled him on
to his back. The blood was already spreading across Jamie’s shirt, around a shredded spot in the fabric where the bullet had torn into his chest. Cronin knew that something similar was happening to him. He could feel the ooze of it on his arm.

  “You stupid goddamn langer,” Cronin said to Jamie. “He’s dead. You could’ve walked away.”

  Jamie’s eyes were rolling in his head. Whatever Cronin was feeling, Jamie was feeling it worse. He spoke in short breaths, between gritted teeth: “Fucking hell. If I’d’a wanted him dead, I coulda done it any time.”

  Cronin tried to lift his left hand, but the pain wouldn’t allow it. He sat on the arm of the wingback, and with the Webley still in his hand, he poked at the lapel of his jacket with the gun barrel to peek at the damage.

  Jamie’s eyes were canted to the side and fixed on Cronin. His breathing came fast and shallow. “You gonna finish the job?”

  “I’m done,” he said. “I wasn’t planning on shooting you—you made that happen. It’s not up to me whether you live or die.”

  JAMIE CLOSED HIS eyes. The crisp white shirt that Helen had starched and ironed for him was soaked and sticky with his own blood. He had taken more time than usual that morning to decide on a necktie; ridiculous as it seemed to him now, he had actually pondered whether to wear the green one to recognize Gavigan’s grand scheme for Ireland, or just go with the blue, because it favored his eyes. Only an hour ago, the decision had seemed to matter.

  How had he let Cronin get a shot off? He had seen the man boiling in the moments before the gun flashed out from under his jacket but Jamie felt like he was watching it happen in a movie. All week long, Cronin had taken whatever abuse Gavigan had heaped on him, and like Gavigan, Jamie came to believe that Cronin was a broken man, easily bullied. Well, cheers to Cronin, then. He had proven them both wrong.