Speak Easy

by Catherynne M. Valente

  But Room 212, she’s getting pretty empty these days. Frankie never sees his roommates anymore. Everyone’s busy, he supposes. Everyone’s got a sweetheart somewhere. He lays about the room like the kind of guy who doesn’t need to split the rent. It’s nice. He looks at Enzo’s drawings under the windowsill. A satyr is licking the ledge. He’s got a fawn in each hand, and the fawns have girl-faces. The same girl face, which Frankie never noticed before now. Oleander Coy’s face, with the quirk in her jaw that says go ahead, impress me. I’ve got all night. Huh, Frankie thinks. Would you look at that.

  Frankie still reads the news through the tubes. Copies it out before his poor brain can chew it soft enough to swallow. So he reads it in his own hand, like he did it, like he made it happen.

  Zelda’s bugged out. Haven’t seen her in a week. No more black punch. Think she went to Canada. —Ollie, Room 1550

  Frankie’s stomach drops down to his shoes. His hands sweat. Canada? What does a girl like that want with Canada? Then his thoughts wriggle out of his head, crazy on panic and gin-shakes. Did he have enough money to head up there? Probably not. Montreal’s closest—but maybe she didn’t speak French. Don’t be stupid, of course she speaks French.

  Frankie saw Zelda just once after the bathtub. She came to 212 and knocked like she didn’t really know how. He’d answered in his pajamas, a little striped number like you see in the pictures. She looked at him with big old circles under her eyes like a raccoon in the daytime, like she didn’t expect herself to be where she was, and maybe didn’t even know where that might be. She just stood there in the hall in a bathing suit, but she wasn’t wet. Shivering, but not wet. Stood in the hall in a bathing suit and opened her mouth and closed it and perched sort of on one leg like one of those goofy flamingoes.

  “Zelda?” He’d asked.

  “Yeah?” she whispered.

  “What…can I do something for you?”

  She stared at him, just so confused, like he’d asked her to dinner in Hungarian.

  “I thought you wanted me.”

  And she ran off. Like she was running from his wanting. He didn’t run after her, more fool him, and if you asked, he couldn’t tell you why, why not then, when in just a minute he’s going to run after her harder than a hunting dog.

  Frankie Key gets called into Room 288. It’s where Raspail Bayeux, the Head Concierge, makes his digs. But Raspy isn’t alone behind his big old warship of a desk, with its green lamp glowing at one end like the light at the end of a dock. Caspar Slake is there, the man up top, the guy who owns the whole shebang. Frankie’s never seen him before. The cat’s not as old as he figured. Wears his clothes like he was born in a three-piece suit.

  “I have a job for you, Francis,” Raspy says in the voice he uses to direct guests to one restaurant over another. The paprikash at the Blue Heart Cafe is particularly good today, sir. “There will be good compensation, both financial and otherwise. If you’re interested.”

  Caspar Slake gives him the up-and-down. “My wife’s gone missing,” he growls, like Frankie did it, somehow, and did it on purpose.

  Frankie’s written this kind of thing a hundred times. He twigs to the situation double quick.

  “I’m no detective, sir,” he hurries.

  “You kids all know each other,” Caspar hisses. He hasn’t slept in a dog’s age. Eyes all red like his eyeballs could smoke the cigarettes themselves. He’s put holes in the wall on six floors with his fists. Little Cass is hiding in the libraries on seventeen, at least, Big Cass thinks so. He’s got bigger problems than his boy. But Little Cass isn’t there anymore, only his daddy doesn’t know it yet. “You all cover for each other. You must know. If one of you knows, you all know.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Mr. Bayeux says quietly.

  “She’s the only one that matters!” Slake snaps.

  “Of course, sir.” Might I recommend the lobster at the Silver Umbrella? Frankie wonders if Raspy ever stops using that voice. If he even has another one. Raspy pushes a sheet of paper across the bow of his desk.

  “This is a list. You don’t have to tell us anything right now. If you get results, they won’t be questioned.”

  Frankie looks at the names. All those dancing princesses, skipping the hop down to the underground.

  “But don’t know anything. Believe me. I work, that’s all I do. If not on the floor, on my books. Nobody tells me anything. I’m a terrible person for the job, honestly. Just about anyone else would be more tuned in than me. I mean, have you asked Al? I’d ask Al. I just write detective stories. When people go missing in real life they’re usually…well, usually dead. And when people go dead, usually you never find out why.”

  Raspy and Caspar glance at each other. They’d ask Al if they could. But you don’t ring-a-ding and summon the guy like a bellhop.

  “She might be up on 201st Street for all I know. Or New Jersey. Or France. It’s impossible.” Frankie’s starting to panic. Sure, it’s nice to have a rich man grateful to you, but it’s miserable to fall down on the job he hands you.

  Everybody’s real quiet. The kind of quiet that’s both the asking and the answering. She’s not in France or New Jersey or up in the nosebleeds. Frankie doesn’t know much but he knows a little. Raspy and Caspy know a lot more. There’s no world outside the hotel once you’ve lived here long enough, and Miss Pearl’s lived there from day one. She’s here. And even if you don’t know where the good gin’s pouring on any given night, you know where people go when they disappear in the Artemisia. And if Zelda went to Canada, Frankie knows he’s staying Stateside.

  “Why me?” he croaks.

  Raspy has a little chuckle. “Well, my lad, between the mad, the drunk, the psychotic, and the consumptive, you’re the only one left.”

  Lobby

  It’s not hard to begin. It isn’t ever hard to start—not stories, not jobs, not flings. It’s the finishing that sticks in your jaw. Frankie always liked starting a story best. Putting a hat on his detective, grey or white or black or buff or blue. Deciding who’s dead. Deciding who wants them not to be dead. Putting shops on the street where Hank Hart or Ken Sharp or Walter Bent keeps his office. Good old Wally. Does he like bourbon or opium? Is he a teetotaler? Will he survive the story? It’s good to live in the beginning. In the Not-Yet, like Zelda said. So right now, Frankie is all right. He hasn’t screwed up yet. He hasn’t rushed the ending or blown out the plot like a flabby tire. He has a place to go, first off. He hasn’t got a hat, but he’s got a mysterious girl love interest and one pair of good shoes and that’s a start. He’s worked with way less than that.

  Frankie goes to the only secret place he knows in the Artemisia. It’s where he gets his paychecks. A little room in the lobby, past the fountain full of gargling seals and their balls all covered with stars, past the soda fountain and the concierge desk and the check-in counter, between the Silver Umbrella restaurant (French and Continental) and the Blue Heart Cafe (Hungarian). It’s a wall and it’s a door and it’s nothing at all. It’s magic, Frankie knows that, even if he doesn’t like to say that word, even if that word is almost like a swear word around here, falls flatter and harder than an uncareful fuck or cunt at the supper table. But he still thinks it’s the kind of magic fellas down on 42nd St do up on stage in tuxedos, the kind that goes abracadabra and then there’s a bunny.

  Here’s the bunny.

  If you stand in front of the paisley wallpaper, right where the blue swirls look like eyes and the oak leafing looks like scrambled green eggs, between the two cafes, and order a croque monsieur with extra gruyere and boysenberry jam, pretty soon after there’ll be a silver dish with a check on it waiting for you in the service elevator, sitting fine as you like on the operator’s plush stool. The dish always beats you to the elevator, even if you take off at a dead run halfway through the -yere in gruyere. It does this time, too. Frankie’s sopping when he rips the gate open, sweating like he gets paid by the drop. But it’s not a check, no sir.

&nb
sp; It’s a swimming cap. Black with silver stars.

  And a little card with some awful nice handwriting on it. The handwriting says Midnight. The Ballroom.

  Thing is, Al won’t close the door on anyone. His parties have room for all. Come on in. Nobody to look at you funny in here. Nobody to tell you not to have that drink, kiss that fella, smash that chair, light that chandelier on fire. Do it all. Do it forever. It’s not Al’s style to wall up his best so a boy like Frankie can’t get at it. He doesn’t dance to that jig. The more the merrier, and Al is all about making merry. Brick by brick, hinge by hinge. Al loves you, kids. From the bottom of your bones.

  Trouble with love is it wants company.

  Banquet Hall

  Al came into this world dancing shoes first, and that’s the way he’ll go out, if he ever does go out. But really, kittens, what are the chances of that? You could say a dance is all he is. Used to be nothing much to do in this world but eating, fucking, killing, trying not to get killed, having babies, and, if your particular local glaciers weren’t too much of a drag, picking berries off the bush and apples from the tree. Back then, Al and his people were a little like dinosaurs. They were bigger than us and better fixed for this world. Sharper teeth, quicker on their feet, lighter bones. Muscles like funny tight braids. They could see better in the dark. Had a couple of different brains to handle the extra load. Larynxes that could make noises that weren’t vowels or consonants but something else, something that could glottal-trot and whistle-waltz so that only wolves and dragonflies could hear. Sometimes they had tails. Sometimes horns. They’d been around for a dog’s age, going about the good animal life, laying eggs, guarding nests, sucking marrow, writing poems on buttercup stems.

  They worried a bit when we figured out fire. Watched us watching it, watching it like it was holy, like it was gonna save us from something, which is all holy’s ever meant. They didn’t like how we watched our fire. See, not a one of Al’s folk ever had to suss out how to make things burn. Or build a hut or chase a mammoth off a cliff or knap a knife or blow through a hollow sheep-bone to make a song or cut a hunk of fur into a person-shape to keep warm when the stars go winter. They’ve got all that inside them. Like you and I got livers. We don’t have to think about how our liver works, it just does its thing and all’s well. One of them could look at a mammoth and it’d find its own cliff and taking a flying leap without so much as a sure, boss. They were knives and fur and songs and burning, they burned all the time, so hot it hurt their bellies, but they couldn’t help it, they crackled and forked and from a ways away it always did look like sparkling.

  So there we were, eating and fucking and killing and trying not to get killed and picking berries and munching apples and lighting sticks against the dark. I just felt sorry for the poor bastards, Al says when you ask him about it, which you should, if your brain is tired of thinking in just the one direction. Anybody gives their dogs toys, don’t they? You don’t just let them lie around in their own shit getting so bored they tear up the sofa just to get a little attention. They were just so cute and helpless. I’ve always had a soft heart.

  So up comes Al and he says to some sad sack of cavemen wearing bear feet over their people feet ’cause the stink is a damn sight better than ten toes worth of frostbite and he says:

  “Hey, cats and kittens, lambs and rams, ladies and gents! Have I got something for you! One hundred percent brand spanking new! You’ll love it, I promise. It’ll knock you flat. It’ll make you feel like a million bucks. What’s a buck? Oh, bucks are fun, you’ll find out later. But what I got? It’ll make a new man out of you. You’ll wanna tell all your friends. It’ll fix you up if you’re sick and make you grin if you’re grim. And it won’t cost a thing. Just take this patch of mammoth butt and stretch it out over these branches, nice and tight, yeah? Tighter than that, even. Come on, put your back into it! There you go! Then you take your hand and you whack it. Whack it again. Whack it quick and whack it slow. Whack it three times, hold still for a sec, then three more times. Two, then three, then four, then hold up, hold up—then five as quick as you can. That’s it, any way you want, loud as you can stand it. Look at you, little drummer girl! Pa-rum-pa-rum-pum! Now just do like I do.”

  That’s what Al does. That’s what he asks. Just do like I do. Be like I am. Faster, quicker, harder, hold still, do it again.

  He showed them how to lift up their people-feet-inside-bear-feet and put them down again on the beat. How to shake their hands and shimmy their hips and do a little soft-shoe on the roof of their caves. He taught them so good they couldn’t stop. It was more fun than staring at fire.

  But Al couldn’t stop either.

  “Hey, man, how about you rip up that cat with the fluffy tail? If you dry out his guts and twist them up real good you can strum something better than drumming. Don’t worry, that cat probably don’t mind. Being music is a damn sight better than being a cat. If you put holes in his bones and blow your breath through his death, you can make just the sweetest sound you ever heard. And hoo boy, lookee here, if you eat these berries instead of those, you’ll see stars. Stars like being born! Come on now, eat up, there’s a good ape. Now, I know you won’t believe me! But if you leave this particular sort of green fuzzy grass in a bunch of water for a spell, it’ll turn into beer. What’s beer? Why, kid, beer’s your best friend. And if you think dancing to dead cat and mammoth ass is good now, just you wait till beer cuts in and shows you how to do-si-do. Aw, look at you. You drew a horsey on the wall! Aren’t you clever. Com’ere and let old Uncle Al give you a kiss.”

  And that’s how people learned to dance. For a good spit of the world, we danced with Al’s crowd and everything was fine as fairy-dust. Sometimes us and them liked the look of each other and it wasn’t easy, but where there’s a lust, there’s a way. Sometimes we got afraid that they’d take it all away. The dancing and the music and the beer and the dead cats that somehow made us cry when you rubbed horse hair against their guts and we’d have to go back to being entertained by the rot of bear feet on our real feet. So then we killed some of them and they killed some of us. But there was always more of us. Life is a numbers racket. They lived a lot longer, but we made more, made them faster, and made them in style. Al did all right with the dancing, the rest of his people said, but maybe he should have cooled it with the beer.

  And I know you won’t believe me, but it’s dancing that made everything else. Once we get ahold of something, we want more and we want it now. More music, more liquor, more dancing, and to get those things and keep those things, you gotta plant things in the ground, try your breath on the bones of every thing that has them, remember the best songs and figure out how to write them down so when somebody’s blowing on your bones, the songs keep on. To have a really good party, you gotta make some swell houses, light them up, paint the walls, invent tables so you can dance on top of them, and doesn’t all that booze taste nice cold?

  We got busy. We called those old dinosaurs God for awhile. Then the Devil. Then cute little chorus girls with nice gams in plays about dreams. They didn’t go away. They just weren’t first on the guest list anymore. And still, Al couldn’t ever leave us be. Why should he? He’ll tell you for free. If you feed something long enough, you own it. He just keeps on shoveling music and dancing and death and blood and his best hooch onto our plates. He’d tell you he’s been pretty damn honest all along. Music is made out of death. Mammoths and horses and cats all in cairns and that’s how you get Mozart and Euripides and Fats Waller. Dancing is a funeral, too, waltzing down the elephants you killed so you and yours could have one more night when you could forget that the glaciers are still at the door, that there’s still nothing but eating and fucking and killing and trying not to get killed and berries that make you see stars and apples that make you see the difference between what’s good and what’s bad.

  You always trade blood for joy. It’s always a deal struck in the wet and the dark. Al didn’t make the rules. He just dances to the s
ong that’s playing. He wants things, too. And I asked him once but he didn’t say, so I’m just going to tell you what I think. That’s cool, right?

  I think Al just wants to feel like he did that first night he showed a caveman how to make a drum and thump the ground. Wants to be the whole world waiting to happen to somebody. Wants to look at a person and see civilization spin up in their eyes, but not just civilization, not just thousands of years of dancing, dancing on pyramids, dancing on galleons, dancing on rockets, dancing on Arcturus, not just that, but also love like pyramids and galleons and rockets. Love like being born. The kind of love you give a guy who taught you everything you know. Everything that matters.

  Even if he’s a son of a bitch.

  The Grand Ballroom

  So Frankie Key, he walks into the Grand Ballroom. And people there are doing what they’ve always done. Slake rolled out fake grass over the floor last summer so folks could practice their putting. Thousands of strands of silk and wool and satin. Looks like the real thing. Even smells like it—some perfumer in the Financial District whipped up a batch of 9th Hole Ambrosia: good soil and sprinkler water and fresh, dewy blades of grass with a little hot hazard sand and moist pond water sliced in for good measure. Green as England. And everyone’s barefoot on this grass that isn’t grass, dancing quick and slow, quick and slow, quick, quick, slow, slow. A couple of old-timers are playing through some infinite eighteenth hole, sinking balls like pearls into black mouths in the floor. A bunch of girls with violets in their hair play croquet, whacking their mallets so hard the balls sail over the dancers, through their swinging, waving arms. A red one shatters a wall-lamp. Everyone laughs. Music plays through, too, mammoth music, cat music, horse music, from five pianos, ten guitars, about a hundred drums, a couple of horns and maybe a squeezebox, and they’re all playing different songs, different times, different everything, but somehow it’s not and they’re all together, the piano boys and the horn-girls and the drummers everywhere and the strummers, too, and the squeezebox orphan squeezing like she’s gonna die any minute and this is the last polka she’s got.