by David Fuller
Longbaugh started to walk away and heard the boy say, “Paris.”
Longbaugh turned back.
“The Eiffel Tower. It’s in Paris.”
Longbaugh hadn’t been sure if the boy even spoke English. The boy had no accent, which surprised him.
“Okay.”
“In France.”
“That part I got.”
Longbaugh saluted him off the narrow brim of his new bowler, then continued on his way.
Longbaugh returned to the pickpocket corner. A few of the victims were still clustered, discussing their adventure. He stepped closer so that they might see him in his new clothes. He overheard them discuss the cowboy who had saved them from being robbed, one fellow looking around for him, his eyes rolling to Longbaugh, then rolling on. The tale of the savior-westerner grew legs until it dwarfed lampposts, straddled fences, and hurdled skyscrapers. He walked directly to the woman whose purse he had rescued and said, “Evenin’.” Her eyes touched him and she smiled unevenly. He should have been relieved, but was instead disappointed, as he had liked being recognized for his goodness and valor. He had always been the outlaw, and here, with a good deed in his pocket, he was forced to disguise his better angels.
He steered for his new home. He knew he was being followed. He paused at a street vendor and bought two wrapped candies. He dropped them in his pocket and returned to the boardinghouse. Once there, he set one of the hard candies on top of an outdoor banister and went inside. Through lace curtains he watched the Chinese boy glide up, snatch the candy, and put it in his pocket. Longbaugh unwrapped the other one and put it in his mouth.
• • •
LONGBAUGH wandered through the downstairs. He stood in the breezeway to the dining room and watched Abigail two rooms away, through the open door into the kitchen.
She moved with an effortless grace that had been missing in his presence, exhibiting an innocent, careless charm now that she thought she was alone. He liked seeing she was not worn down by life, that a young vibrant girl still burbled within, and he was startled to realize how aggressively he was drawn to her. She turned sideways and he froze in place so that she wouldn’t pick up his movement peripherally. She had changed her look. Her hair was pinned and neat, her face scrubbed, her cheeks wore a high blush, and her eyes had been accented to appear larger. He realized unhappily that all this had been done for him. While keenly attracted to her, he was not pleased to know she might want something from him. Nevertheless, he did not turn away.
She reached for a serving dish that held three heads of garlic, but her hands inexplicably stopped, hovering there without motion. After a long moment, he saw her move in a way that didn’t fit her mission. A tiny musical wave rolled through her fingers, from pinky to ring to middle to index finger and back, gentle waves that rode up the sand, then rolled away. After a moment the wave washed up her wrists, then through her arms to crest in her shoulders. Her torso and hips joined the flow and her whole body was in heat. It was a moment before he realized she wasn’t wearing a corset, and something shifted inside him. The beat began to move him, but he fought it, anchoring his foot to the floor. He felt the unheard music in her head, but tamped down the bump of his heart. He stood there watching her sway in her romantic trance and was suddenly overwhelmed by a surge of acute melancholy. He had been alone, a long time alone, and here, presented with something warm and young and pretty that he might take and have and hold in his arms, he realized he was more lonely than at any time he could remember. His heart dropped into a deep, soundless hollow. He wanted to touch and taste her to fill his emptiness, all the while knowing the only person who could sate him had gone silent. He lost his balance and put his hand out to touch the doorframe.
He watched her now as if from a great distance. She took up a garlic bulb, but the head was soft in her fingers. Her sway faded and she sniffed it, tossed it aside, and reached for the second bulb. She tested it and it was firm and she nodded, but her nod became a gentle head bob that then pendulumed to a fresh rhythm through her belly and hips. She crossed the room with the light step of a dancer, approaching a basket of tomatoes. She leaned in close to the basket and her head snapped back, the dancer frozen, the music silenced, nostrils flaring as she dipped her hands in the basket as if into ice water and came out cupping two oozing tomatoes frosted on the bottom with blue fuzz. She hurried them dripping to the trash. She wiped her palms with a dishrag and turned in a circle, lip curled, contemplating an alternate plan, and then she saw him. To her credit, she did not flinch.
He ventured through the dining room to the kitchen doorway.
“I thought you were a stranger. Good . . . good suit.” She put the dishrag aside and smelled her fingers. Her taut expression returned as she slipped into her thoughts, and he imagined she was reviewing in her head the past few minutes of her performance. Or perhaps she saw something in his face that told her whatever fancy she’d created about him was not available to her.
“Appreciate the recommendation.”
“You can get lucky there sometimes. Although I miss the boots.”
“I saved them. Been here long?”
“I’m a little behind with supper. Nothing special, but it won’t disappoint unless you’re addicted to Maison Dorée or Louis Sherry.”
“I meant living here.”
“Oh. A few years. We were boarders and the owner asked me to take on the day-to-day.”
“We?”
“My, uh, my husband and I.”
“Then you know Etta. Ethel.”
She became suspicious. “What’s your name again?”
“Longbaugh.”
“Right, Longbaugh. Etta’s an unusual name. I think I would have remembered.”
“She lived here up to two years ago. Maybe you moved in after.”
“No,” she said obstinately, “been here five years. You’ve got the wrong address.”
He did not reach for the letter in his pocket. He well remembered the address.
“Maybe you made a mistake coming here, Mr. Longbaugh. Maybe this isn’t the right place for you. I’ll give you back your money, you’ll find another place.”
The dreamy young woman was gone, and he was sorry. He said nothing.
“So, just be on your way.”
He thought he understood. “I’m not a stranger.”
Abigail paused. “Men say those things when they want something.”
“Although I suppose some men are always strangers to their wives.”
Abigail cocked her head. “No. I don’t believe you. She was married but her husband had a different name.”
“Alonzo.”
“Is that a guess?”
“Harry Alonzo Longbaugh.”
She was slow to answer. “You could have heard that somewhere.”
“So she did live here.”
Abigail ran her hands down her dress trying to devise a proof. “Where were you? Where were you living?”
“Out west.”
“No, sorry, her husband was in prison.”
“She would not have told you that.”
“When her husband’s letters came, I sent them back.” She looked smug, as if she had outplayed him at his own game. She leaned her low back against the counter and crossed her arms.
“Why?”
“Because she asked me to.”
“Why?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to hear from you . . . from her husband . . . again.”
“That’s possible.” Without thinking, he pulled her last letter out of his jacket and absently tapped it on the table without looking at it.
Abigail watched the tap-tap-tap, and her arms dropped to her sides.
“That’s one of her letters,” said Abigail.
He looked at her, then at the letter.
“I recognize it,” said
Abigail. “You have one of her letters.”
“Yes.”
“Meaning you’re her husband.”
“Unless I stole this, too, along with his name.”
“No. Stop that, don’t tease me. You’re Harry Alonzo.”
“Is everyone in New York so suspicious?”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She was flustered and she rushed to make up for her lack of trust. “She left suddenly. Like you said, about two years ago. I thought maybe she got sick of us, but I couldn’t say why, I mean, we were friends, or I thought we were. She actually did say if letters came from you, I had to send them back unopened.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
“And she didn’t say why to send my letters back?”
“She left so suddenly, I never got to ask. I returned your letters and her sister’s.”
“Her sister’s letters?”
She nodded. “Wilhelmina’s. I wish I could tell you why she left. Maybe it had something to do with those people, but they only came after she was gone.”
“Men came here?”
“Well, one was a man.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“A woman came the day after she left, one of ‘those’ women, you know who I mean, although maybe that wasn’t so odd, since she tried to help different . . . different sorts of people.” Abigail flushed. “Anyway, you know the kind I mean. That was her, the way she lived, helping people. But you knew her, you knew what she was like.”
He thought he did not know her. Her actions were inexplicable, inexcusable, opaque. Somewhere in the choices she made was the woman he loved. But her choices were unrecognizable.
“Who came after that?”
“A day or two later a man came. He had a bandage on his cheek. He was handsome, dark hair, olive skin, what do you call that? Swarthy. He was polite, but I could tell it wasn’t sincere. He scared me.”
Clearly not one of the two monkeys who had visited Mina. He had thought that those men were hired to intimidate her and were therefore unimportant. Now he was convinced.
“Remember his name?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Ever see him before?”
She shrugged. “It was two years ago.”
“Had she spoken about him?”
“When she wasn’t talking about you, she talked about Lillian.”
“Lillian Wald.”
She nodded. “The founder of that Settlement place. I saw her give a speech once. Oh dear. Don’t tell my husband. It was about suffrage and temperance.”
“She wrote me about her.”
“She liked it there. She’d come home and stop by the mirror and say, ‘Etta, that was a pretty good day.’”
“She said ‘Etta’?”
“Wasn’t that her name?”
“Yes.” He knew a strange relief. An encounter with the familiar, something that told him they were speaking of the same person. It was natural to call herself Etta with him, and even use it to annoy Mina, but that she had adopted it in New York meant something more.
“She’d take your letters and rush upstairs. Not exactly ladylike. She was less lonely when they came. After she read them, she was sadder.”
Longbaugh pictured her on the stairs, holding up her skirt to run.
“I thought of us as friends, but she didn’t always notice me. She had her own life. I liked her and wanted her to like me, but . . .” She shrugged. “Sometimes when she talked to me, it was like, I don’t know, she had a sort of glow that I could almost, this sounds silly, but that I could feel. And I felt . . . I guess I felt respected.”
Longbaugh understood. He had seen how idly Etta treated certain people. He had also seen her turn on that light and how people were drawn to it. She had been like that with him every day they were together.
“Abigail, I appreciate all this.”
“Oh goodness, call me Abby,” she said, then was flustered and turned to the side, running her fingers across her forehead to push away habitually loose hairs that today were not loose but carefully pinned.
“What did she look like?” He meant it as a neutral question. “What did she wear?”
“That’s very sweet,” said Abigail sentimentally.
Longbaugh cringed and said nothing.
“I suppose she looked like a New York City girl. Kept her hair up, wore shirtwaists, long skirts, like most of us.” She looked down at her dress. “When we’re out in the street.”
“Anything more about this man, the one with the bandage?”
Abigail shook her head no. “You came a long way to find her.”
He needed to steer her away from her maudlin appreciation of his marriage. “Thank you again, Abby.” He looked over and saw a muscular young man in the doorway, dressed in overalls with a black slouch hat in his hands, like the young men he had seen on the streets. He would learn later that he was dressing like a Wobbly, a western miner, part of the Industrial Workers of the World. Tough men emulated by the young boys of the East.
Abigail looked as well. “Oh. Robert. You’re home early.”
She pushed up from where she leaned on the counter, but did not move toward him. Longbaugh thought her tone defensive, caught talking with a man in her kitchen, with her hair pinned and makeup on her face.
Robert Levi looked younger than he must have been. His shoulders were broad, his chest and hips narrow. His hair was short and his nose was a little off center, as if it had been broken. He crossed to her, but they did not touch. He took an extra step to command the space between his wife and this intruder, and Longbaugh knew he had an enemy.
“This is Mr. Alonzo,” said Abigail.
“Longbaugh,” said Longbaugh.
“Yeah,” said Levi, narrowing his eyes. “Robert Levi, with an I.” He waited to see what move Longbaugh would make. Longbaugh was patient. Levi gave him the same malignant eye Longbaugh had previously earned from Abigail, and he wondered who had picked it up from whom.
“I’m a sandhog,” said Levi, as if that should mean something.
“It’s not like that, Robert,” said Abigail. “And you’re not a sandhog anymore, you’re a manager.”
“Once a sandhog, always a sandhog.”
“You don’t need to be that way, he’s our new boarder.”
“You accepted a male boarder without checking with me?”
“What’s a sandhog?” said Longbaugh.
“Who is this genius?” said Levi derisively. “‘What’s a sandhog?’”
“I’ll explain later,” said Abigail to Levi, wanting to cut him off.
“I was in prison, so I don’t know from sandhogs.”
“You said this man could live here? He was in prison!”
“You don’t understand,” said Abigail.
“Give him back his money, he’s leaving.”
“You don’t understand, and he stays.”
“I’m Etta’s husband, so what’s a sandhog?”
Levi stopped. “Etta?”
“Sandhogs dig subway tunnels,” said Abigail.
“I worked under the river,” said Levi, but still a step behind and less certain now.
“Takes courage,” said Longbaugh. “And rising to manager makes you a man of ambition.”
Levi stared at him, his mouth opening and closing, as if all former sandhogs had gills.
“I imagine you two have things to discuss.” Longbaugh moved to the door, then looked at Abigail. “Which was Etta’s room?”
“On your floor, two doors toward the back.”
He left them to their spat.
• • •
HE KNOCKED ON THE DOOR that had once been Etta’s and
heard nothing. He knew locks, and it was a simple matter to spring this one. He stepped inside and silently closed the door behind him.
The rooms came furnished, so he concentrated on personal items. A man’s things hung in a wooden wardrobe. Personal toiletry items were on the table by the window, a few papers by a small bed table. The boarder likely spent little time here. Longbaugh looked for any remnant of Etta, knowing it was futile. He searched behind and beneath things. He held out hope that she might have left him a message. The dreariness of that tragic romantic notion annoyed him, but with no other options, he persisted. He slid under the bed and felt between slats and mattress. He reached behind the wardrobe. He looked behind framed drawings on the wall. He tested floorboards and molding. He looked behind curtains.
He sat in the chair. He appraised the room. Etta’s room. Even if a message had once existed, any number of things could have come between her leaving it and its being inadvertently moved or removed. He had the sense, and not for the first time, that he was chasing a phantom. If she had imagined him coming back for her, any message would have been covert, placed so only Longbaugh could find or understand it. If she had bothered to leave a message. His imagination wanted a message, so he wasted his pathetic time hunting for it. He disliked this need, thought it a weakness, but he knew that wouldn’t stop him from looking next in the hallway. He hesitated to leave her room. He was one step closer to her in time. His eyes scoured the floor, the tables, the curtains. They moved up and measured the ceiling, and when he saw it he was amazed that he had missed it, as it was so obvious. Liberty’s arm holding the torch, right there, on top of the wardrobe. He pulled the chair over and stood on it and brought the cheap memento down, and was further amazed to find a piece of olive ribbon tied around Liberty’s middle like a sash. His mind went to the ribbon he had seen on the shelf in the indoor privy, and he understood. The two ribbons weren’t placed randomly, they were a color match with his bandanna, and she had placed them deliberately. She had left a trail, and he was the only one who would know to follow it.
He sat on her bed, holding the toy, then lay on his side and curled around it. He pulled off the satin ribbon. About six inches long. Both ends of the ribbon were ragged, as if torn from a larger piece. He tried to picture the original, longer stretch of ribbon, to envision from where it had come. He didn’t think it had come from a spool, as she had apparently left the boardinghouse in a hurry so she would have been improvising and wouldn’t have had time to go to a store. It had to have been something she already owned. The trim from a hat’s brim? Ornamentation on a dress? But there were no sewing stitches along the side of the ribbon, as there would have been had it been dress trim. Part of a decorative bow? But there were no fold creases other than where it had been loosely tied to make Liberty’s sash. He turned to the Liberty toy. He looked for something there, maybe a scratched message on the statue’s base. He turned it over, and the hollow bottom was empty. He sat it on the blanket and stared at it, all the while rubbing the satin ribbon between his fingers and thumb. He breathed fully. There was no message beyond the presence of the statue and the ribbons. She may not have known where she was going. This was her way to connect, to tell him there was a trail out there for him to follow, so that he knew what to look for.
