“What the hell is your problem?” the seedy little man shot back.
“My problem,” said August, rage boiling his insides red as lobsters, “is that if what I saw last night is any indication, the state of our theatre is in such a decline that we would do better to return to the Dark Ages and swallow the sermonizing drivel of the passion plays rather than accept that tripe playing next door. Furthermore, I can’t deduce whether or not A Wardrobe Full of Miracles or an Armoire Stuffed with Dreams is but a rarefied blemish on the face of American theatre or, as I fear, merely an example of the chronic decay of the art at large, because all the blasted windows at the Graff are locked, and I have no money of my own with which to secure a ticket!”
August’s small chest was heaving after his diatribe, and several onlookers’ concerns as to his well-being were only assuaged by the palatable lies of Miss Butler. “Displaced after the London bombings, the poor dear. Come, have some bourbon.”
The crowd was waylaid by Miss Butler’s tale, all except the dodgy gentleman to whom August had spit out his tirade in the first place.
“You need to open a window?” the man asked, barely opening his mouth.
For the first time, August took a moment to consider the soldier he’d been arguing with. There was something off about him. The man’s haircut was hardly the military standard; his dark locks weren’t shorn to a tight buzz but instead hung like a limp mop, exuding a certain greasiness. Then there were the medals pinned to his chest. Somehow August distrusted that this man had accumulated quite so much merit. His puny frame looked like it could hardly withstand the weight of all the acclaim he’d apparently received. And speaking of puny, the man was short. August was no giant, in fact he was small for his age, yet the boy was inching perilously close to this man’s neck. Weren’t there height requirements in the army?
“You’re not in the army,” August stated.
“And what the hell are you? CID?” said the shifty-eyed stranger as he grabbed August by the arm and pulled him into a more secluded corner of the bistro. “Now look here, I didn’t understand more than half of what you just said, but it seems like you need to case this guy Graff’s joint, am I right?”
August, connoisseur of cheap detective pulp, knew very well what “to case a joint” meant. He gave a reluctant nod.
“Swell. I myself need a reference of character. See that bird over there with the huge . . . personality? I try to be . . . uh . . . generous with my affections, but for some reason, she won’t give me the time of day. So whaddaya say? You jerk my . . . chain . . . I’ll jerk yours? Goddamn it, I can’t talk to a fucking toddler!”
August gave the man a shrewd stare. “Fine,” he agreed. “But you have to teach me to pick a lock, not just do it for me.”
“Sure, sure,” said the man, rubbing his hands together in a cartoon parody of lust. “Now let’s get over there before some other charlie gets her first.”
“Hold on a minute,” August protested as the man literally dragged him across the bistro. “You have to teach me how to pick locks before I subject that poor woman to you.”
“What the hell, kid? I can tell from all your fancy talk that you’re no dumb-ass, but it’s usually the wordy kind that don’t got the aptitude for my kind of work.” He stressed the word aptitude so hard that August was sure it was the most polysyllabic one he’d ever uttered.
“If I give you a character reference first,” August countered, “you’ll just go ravage her in some sordid motel without teaching me anything!”
The “soldier” stared down at August. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Iago Montague,” August lied. “What’s yours?”
“Sergeant Sycamore,” said the man, also obviously lying. “You’re sharp, Iago, I’ll give you that. Bring me a bobby pin. Takes you longer than two minutes, can’t promise I’ll still be here.” And with that, Sergeant Sycamore folded into the dance floor.
Pumping his legs as fast as they could stand, August made his way to the sandwich counter and singled out the volunteer with the most elaborately desperate hairstyle.
“Please, miss!” he cried when he’d finally reached her. “I need one of your bobby pins.”
“What for?” she asked, nonchalantly popping gum.
“For the war effort!” August screamed.
The girl and her friends exploded into a titter of condescending giggles. “Scram, kid,” she said. “You’re scaring away the big boys.”
Under normal circumstances, August would never debase himself publicly. In fact, it was a point of personal pride that he’d never done so. But the art of theatre needed defending, and if there was one thing he’d learned from his acquaintances in the armed forces (other than the existence of fellatio), it was that sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.
August started crying. Not a light smattering of delicate teardrops, but a crimson-faced, snot-discharging detonation of sobs that caused even the blaring band to falter.
“Here, take one,” said the gum-smacker, casting furtive glances about the room as she shoved bobby pins into August’s hand. “Take them all.”
August’s onslaught of tears instantly ceased, his face now determined as he dashed off to find Sergeant Sycamore, the calming falsehoods of Miss Butler fading into the background as he ran. “Poor child, they had it the hardest in Leningrad. Vodka, anyone?”
The dance floor was sardine-tin-packed as always, full of burly military frames and the swirling skirts of off-duty volunteers. Owing to the crowd, August couldn’t find the so-called sergeant anywhere. Securing the bobby pins had taken more time than he’d anticipated, but surely Sycamore hadn’t already left. August doubted there was a living woman who would willingly go home with the man, but perhaps there were some women of the night here. Oh, how dreadful if a prostitute were to shatter August’s plans of learning to break and enter!
At the height of his panic, August caught sight of Sergeant Sycamore relieving an air force commander of his wallet.
“I’ve got the pins,” August said, the sound of his voice causing the pilot to swing around and catch Sycamore in his act of theft.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, noticing his wallet in another man’s hands.
Sycamore offered August a withering curl of his lip before saying, “Just caught this little brat trying to lift your billfold, sir. Be careful, New York is full of these unsavory sorts.” As he handed back the wallet to the officer, August watched Sycamore peel away a twenty with a magician’s finesse. Before this misdemeanor was noted, Sycamore grabbed August and dragged him out of the bistro.
“This bit of skirt better be worth the trouble you’re putting me through, kid.” Sycamore slipped and ducked through the halls and stairwells of the Scarsenguard until he came upon the door that led to the safe where the evening’s ticket sales were kept. He jiggled the doorknob, smiled when it didn’t catch, held out an open palm to August, who quickly supplied a bobby pin, and set to work.
“Window’s too advanced for a greenhorn like you,” he explained, straightening out the bobby pin and inserting it into the keyhole. “Most of them won’t open even if they are unlocked, things are so damn rusted, and if they are high quality, you need a crowbar or some glass cutters, but then you’re leaving a trail. For your purposes, you’re gonna want to find a door.”
“They teach you all this in the army?” August questioned with a skeptical arch of his eyebrow.
“Sure, kid. In basic, right after a pair of redheads play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ on your kazoo.”
The door clicked open.
“Now watch closely, ’cause next time, you’re on your own.”
Sycamore went slower, breaking down the purpose of each jostle. “Locks are like ladies,” he disclosed. “Each one is different, but if you turn ’em the right way, they open up every time.” Though August was sickened by the casual misogyny, he had to admit Sycamore had some showmanship; as if on cue, the door unfastened as s
oon as he’d finished his crude analogy.
“Okay,” said Sycamore, “I’m gonna lock the room from the inside and wait for you to open it up. Shout out any questions.” He disappeared behind the door, latching it behind him.
As he’d been shown, August straightened out the bobby pin and stuck it into the lock. After a twist or two, nothing happened. He shimmied the pin violently in frustration.
“You trying to break the door down?” Sycamore admonished from behind it. “Take it nice and slow, or you’ll snap the damn pin in the lock.”
August let out a steadying sigh and then tried to apply the advice. Nothing was happening, though. It felt like he wasn’t doing anything but twiddling a stick through a puddle of mud, not that he’d had much experience with such bucolic pastimes, but he’d read his fair share of Twain and felt the simile apt.
Just as he was about to recommence his shake-with-reckless-abandon strategy, he met the slightest resistance against the pin. Careful not to lose his tenuous advantage, August pressed the pin a little farther and was sure he felt the tumbler shifting, almost as if he were balancing a repelling magnet atop another. Ever so gently, he continued to apply pressure until he heard the telltale click, and the door swung open. Beaming, August was greeted with the sight of an equally ecstatic Sycamore, who, the boy just now realized, had been unsupervised in a locked room that contained the Scarsenguard’s safe. There wasn’t much to take; the theater hadn’t had a play running in years, so there was no money from ticket sales. Still, Sycamore’s pockets looked somehow heavier than they had before he entered.
“Way to go, kid. You’ll be a felon in no time. Now let’s go find that broad.”
“I want to give it another shot,” said August, bending another pin into shape.
“No way. I said I’d teach you to pick a lock, not give you a master class. I upheld my part of the bargain.” The sergeant was filled with such righteous indignation that August suspected this may have been the first time he’d ever seen a promise through and intended to capitalize on being sanctimonious while he could.
“Fine.” August sighed. “Lead me to the unfortunate soul. Though her womanhood will be stained forevermore after tonight, I am nothing if not true to my word.”
“Jesus, Montague, you really are something.”
As they wound their way back down to the bistro, Sergeant Sycamore kept trying to coach August on what to say.
“Maybe tell her I adopted you from a real run-down orphanage. Or cry a little and tell her I saved your kitty cat from a tree.”
“You have already tried your hand at impressing the lady and have failed most miserably. Please, leave the seduction to me.”
Back in the bistro, Sycamore scanned the room before finding his intended. “There she is! The one with jugs for days! Er . . . bosoms. Bosoms for days.”
August spotted her. She did indeed have impressive bosoms, though that may have been her only commendable attribute. Her hair was the tackiest shade of bottled blond, her cheeks painted a most garish pink. Her skirt was too short, her heels too high. August was not one to judge on appearances, but he was only human.
“She’s an angel,” whispered Sycamore.
“Quite,” said August.
“Now remember, she doesn’t like it when you come on too strong . . .”
But August had already left his comrade behind, transforming into character as he crossed the room.
The woman was honking loudly to some poor private about the specific qualities of her perfume. The private nodded vaguely, eyes glued to her cleavage. August feared he might be too late but pressed ahead, charging headlong into the woman.
“Son of a bitch!” she cried.
“Sacrebleu!” August shouted in tandem.
“Huh?” said the woman, most eloquently.
August had decided that a blind French child would be the best way to win this woman over. The blindness would gain her sympathy, while being French would lend him a seductive air of mystery. So he opened his eyes as wide as they would go, determined not to blink, and stared at the space just to the right of her face. “I am so sorry, madame,” he began in an impeccable French dialect he had perfected when Henry V ran at the Scarsenguard, “I didn’t see you there. Alas, I have not seen anything in years, not since the damned Germans invaded fair Paris.” Here he let out a sigh.
“Whadda ya mean, ya can’t see nothing?” she asked, massaging the shin that had taken the brunt of August’s blow.
He’d thought that his skill at appearing blind would be enough, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that this poor woman was unaccustomed to men making eye contact with her. August would have to be blunt. “I am blind, madame. Blinded by the Germans.”
She gasped, then clapped loudly near the boy’s face—to test his blindness, August supposed. “Geez, I guess you are blind. But what are you doing in a place like this?”
“Ah, you have come to the heart of the matter, madame. I am lost! Très lost!”
“Oh no,” she cried, hands gripping her cheeks. Then she sneezed and stared vacantly into space, all memory of her current conversation seemingly obliterated.
“Madame,” August continued, snapping in her ears to regain her attention, “you must help me.”
“Excuse me,” she said, “but I’m a mademoiselle, not a madame.” She waggled her left hand at August, displaying the lack of a wedding ring.
August sighed. “I am blind and cannot see what you are doing.”
“I’m unmarried!” she shouted, employing the tactic of volume.
August decided to apply some of the sensuality the French were known for. “Ah, madame, a mademoiselle is simply a maid unschooled in the ways of love. You have clearly been studying the art of love for quite some time.”
What was meant to be a modest giggle but in all actuality was closer to a donkey’s bray burst from her mouth. “How can you tell?” she asked.
August decided a lie was, in this case, kinder than the obvious truth. “Madame, a Frenchman, he always knows.” He gave her a sly wink. Do blind people wink? Too late; he would own his choices! “You must help me, my fair coquette! I have become lost from the man who saved me from the evil beady-eyed Germans!”
“You mean, the man who saved you is here?” she cried, breathless with excitement.
“Oui! His name is Sergeant Sycamore, and a braver man has never lived.”
“What’s going on over here, anyways?” said Sycamore as he sidled into the conversation, dripping with lust.
“Scram, creep,” the blonde said. “We’re looking for a Sergeant Sycamore. Saved this here kid’s life.”
“But, madame,” August interjected, “this is Sergeant Sycamore himself!”
“This guy?” she asked, her disappointment on full display.
“Be not so quick to judge. War is never fair, and it has been particularly unkind to Sergeant Sycamore’s appearance.”
“Come on, kid!”
“But when he rescued me, killing a roomful of Germans in the process, he was the very picture of swarthy shapeliness.”
“What, you could see then?” she asked.
“Er . . . yes, but I was blinded right afterward by a fire set by the Germans to smoke us out. Sycamore saved me from that fire, too.”
“Yeah, sure, and I killed forty Germans that time!”
August stared at Sycamore straight in his eyes. “Forty? Really?”
“Yeah, forty. With only a grenade and three bullets. It’s how I got all these here medals,” he said, indicating his bronze-laden chest.
“Those sure are shiny,” said the blonde in complete and utter seriousness.
“Not as shiny as my heart felt after saving this here kid.”
August had to remove himself from the conversation at this point.
The next night, however, he was blessing Sergeant Sycamore as he unlocked the rooftop door to the Graff. After only a few minutes of loitering, August was able to sneak past the usher.
; While the interiors of the Scarsenguard and the Walsh were both lovely, the Graff was breathtaking. As he waited for the play to start, August flipped through a pilfered Playbill. Tonight’s offering was entitled Red, White and True. Though he generally deplored puns as a rule, over the past few years August had become highly patriotic, and he was willing to overlook a saccharine title in the name of camaraderie and good, clean American fun.
After eons, the lights dimmed and the curtains opened. Two scenes in, and August would’ve sold Roosevelt himself to the first passing German if only this abortion of a play would cease. The playwright was hawking sentimental drivel, determined to wring the audience dry of its every tear. There was such a thing as restraint. In the final act, when the soldier returned home one-legged to his adoring wife, only to be shot by a vengeful Italian as soon as the reunited couple embraced, August stood, took off his shoes, loudly clicked the heels together, and announced, “I am done with this place.”
He crawled back along the drainpipes and crooked chimneys to his bedroom, where he tried to clear his head by rereading King Lear, but alas, the stench of the substandard still befouled his senses. The boy tossed the play aside with a frustrated howl, punched his pillow, and then fell into a troubled sleep. It was that night that August was forced to accept the sad fact that someday all humanity must: sometimes art is just a great big pile of shit.
* * *
Nineteen forty-four died, and 1945 rose from its ashes. August had given up sneaking into nearby theaters; he didn’t think his constitution could withstand one more fiasco. Instead, he set his mind to becoming the most proficient lockpick under the age of twenty. Deadbolts, padlocks, wall mounts, and doorknobs all trembled when August approached, pin extended, the tip of his tongue curling over his upper lip in concentration. He did exhaustive research on Houdini and had Miss Butler bring him some, in her opinion, dismally dull literature on security manufacture from the New York Public Library. By late February, not a single lock in the Scarsenguard could best August save for the safe, and he was reading up on that.
The Astonishing Life of August March Page 5
