Nevermore (12 page)

Mary’s salary seemed little better than a joke, but she picked up good tips and figured the convenience made it worthwhile. The Club Gallant was close to her apartment on Bleecker Street and working nights allowed her to tramp from audition to audition during the day. She studied the daily
Variety
religiously, attending every advertised open casting call. She became the uncrowned queen of “cattle calls.” Herded onto a bare stage under a single, dangling incandescent bulb among dozens of other aspiring chorus girls, and given less than a minute to strut her stuff, Mary felt a bovine weariness settle into her bones.

And what had she to show for all the worn shoe leather and broken dreams? A few days’ work here and there for Selznick and Biograph and other local film production companies. Two weeks dressed as Little Bo Peep, handing out free scented Lady Janis Complexion Soap samples at Macy’s department store. A session with a photographer, modeling corsets for the B. Altman catalog. And, although she fantasized about becoming a Ziegfeld girl in the “Follies,” the closest she ever came to realizing that aspiration remained a two-week engagement in the company of a vaudeville magician.

It would take a bit of her own magic to make the leap to stardom. At a time when entire careers centered on such dubious accomplishments as flagpole sitting and winning crossword puzzle tournaments, anyone with ambition might pluck fame from obscurity, like a rabbit from a silk top hat, by some single act of notoriety.

When Mary Rogers read the newspaper accounts of the first dance marathon contest held in the United States on March 31, she hardly gave the article a second thought. The novelty had originated in England and didn’t seem likely to appeal to American tastes. She’d been dead wrong on that score. By the middle of April, more than a dozen competitions had been staged coast-to-coast, with a current endurance record of over ninety hours. Another fad off and running. On the day Roseland Ballroom advertised a May marathon featuring a grand prize of $500, Mary headed the line forming on Fifty-second Street, among the first five contestants to pay the required two-dollar entry fee.

Her partner was a waiter from the club, an affable young man named George Paterson Dobbs, who everyone called “Pumpkin” or “Pummie” for reasons completely unknown to Mary. An aspiring poet, he had lived in the Village for several years before the war, returning to a garret on Carmine Street after being demobbed. Pummie knew Max Eastman and all that gang at
The Masses,
and had published some slight undistinguished work in
The Quill
and
The Dial.
Mary asked him to dance with her in the marathon contest mainly because no romantic attachment connected them. This was strictly business.

Halfway through the second day, Mary Rogers felt sure she hated Pummie. His head rested heavily on her shoulder and the sickly-sweet odor of the Glostora he used to groom his hair made her stomach queasy. His face turned away and at least she didn’t suffer the rasp of his beard or smell his sour, tobacco-stale breath. She wondered if he was sleeping. His feet dragged mechanically across the polished hardwood floor, but that didn’t prove anything. She’d fallen asleep herself on several occasions and danced on like a zombie, never missing a step.

Every hour, the contestants enjoyed a fifteen-minute recess, barely enough time for a cup of coffee, a bite of a sandwich, and a couple of puffs on a cigarette before the most recent orchestra struck up another fox-trot. Mary no longer distinguished one tune from the next. To her weary ears, “I Ain’t Got Nobody” might just as well have been “Ain’t We Got Fun.”

Of over one hundred couples starting the marathon, fewer than thirty-odd remained on the dance floor. Even the musicians looked rumpled and fatigued, “The Sheik of Araby” sounding like a dirge. Mary cursed her fashionable high-heeled pumps. Why hadn’t she had the foresight to wear something more sensible? Her feet were killing her. Not even a massage from one of the attending nurses during the last break had been much help. When she saw two young women in ballet slippers and another wearing rubber-soled gymnasium shoes, she lost hope entirely. There was no way she could go the distance.

Suddenly, Pummie screamed and fell to the floor clutching his right calf.

“Get up!” she shrieked, tugging at him.

“I’ve got a cramp.” His face contorted with pain. “Oh, my dear God!”

“Get up, you bastard! We’ll be disqualified.”

“I can’t move. Feels like it’s broken.”

She kicked at him. “Get up! Get up! Get up! …”

Whirling coin-sized spots of light reflecting from the rotating mirrored ball flickered across her furious, imploring features. “Please, Pummie,” she pleaded. “Please, please, please … get up and dance.”

“I can’t, Mary. Honest.” George Paterson Dobbs stared at her with the pain-heightened innocence of a chromolith martyr. “I’m finished.”

“Piss on you then!” Mary turned with a sneer and hobbled unsteadily off the dance floor, the sad complaint of the orchestra droning a mournful rendition of “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” behind her.

Outside on the sidewalk, daylight took her by surprise. A flock of pigeons whirled into the angled sunlight, turning in a single motion like leaves caught in a whirlwind. Still early, and the shops, theaters, and restaurants had yet to open. Broadway was not an a.m. boulevard.

Mary walked to Forty-seventh Street, then changed her mind and headed east. She didn’t feel like taking the subway downtown. A huge painted spectacular advertising Piedmont Cigarettes high above the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue made her crave a smoke, but she’d done the last of her coffin nails almost an hour ago. “My lucky day,” she said out loud, her laugh a bitter echo of her emotional state.

Every hotel, had a cigar stand, but Mary didn’t want to enter a lobby unescorted and reached Fifth Avenue without passing another establishment selling cigarettes. She caught a downtown number four bus, paid her ten-cent fare to the conductor, and climbed the curving rear stairs to the upper deck. Trolley cars and the subway cost only a nickel but, after thirty-six long hours at Roseland, Mary craved fresh air.

It felt good to sit in the open with the sun on her face and a brisk wind tangling her bleached blond hair. A man across the aisle lit up, the flat green metal tin still in his hand. Mary bummed a Lucky Strike, although she adroitly avoided being drawn into any sort of conversation.

Exhaling, she felt her bad mood flowing away on the breeze along with curling wreaths of smoke. Before reaching the Waldorf-Astoria on Thirty-fourth Street, the bus passed a parade of great department stores: B. Altman’s, Lord & Taylor’s, Tiffany’s, Gorham, Best & Company. Mary indulged in a fantasy shopping spree. Something to wear while strutting along Peacock Alley.

Dream-shopping was all Mary could afford these days. Things had seemed more promising a couple of months ago when she landed a job in Harry Houdini’s vaudeville company. The pay topped $35 a week and she was giddy in anticipation of buying a fabulous new wardrobe. Next thing you know, the stuck-up little runt docked her a fin because she forgot some dumb part of her costume and after they played the Palace she got notice she wouldn’t be needed for the short tour of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Still a chance she might be asked back for ten weeks on the western circuit later in the summer, but something told her not to hold her breath on that score.

The boy sitting in front of her looked to be about eight. Mary wondered why he wasn’t in school. He kneeled on his seat, leaning over the rail and pointing out passing automobiles to the plump, dark-haired woman with him. Canvas-topped cars constituted the large majority, but many enclosed sedans and coupes joined their ranks. Most were Fords—high, black, boxlike Model Ts—the only vehicle Mary could identify by brand name.

“There’s a Jordan Playboy, Blair,” the little boy cried, pointing to a rakish roadster. “Look, Blair. An Apperson Eight! And a Barney Oldsmobile! There’s a Franklin, it’s got an air-cooled engine… . And a Milburn Light Electric… . Hey! Hey! A Kenworthy! A Chandler! … An Auburn! … A Maxwell! … A Roamer! … A Peerless! … A Locomobile! … An Owen Magnetic! … A Grant Six! … A Jewett!

… A Haynes! … A Cadillac! …” The automotive litany continued unabated until Blair and the little boy got off the bus at Fourteenth Street.

Mary Rogers wondered about their destination, having already decided they were filthy rich, a latter-day Buster Brown and his governess. Who else but a millionaire’s brat could rattle off fancy car names like that? Were they going shopping? Did they live in one of the old family mansions on lower Fifth? Mary occupied herself with such speculation for the final few blocks past the Salamagundi Club and the gleaming, white brick Brevoort Hotel. At the last stop, she stepped down onto the pavement opposite Washington Mews.

She headed south into the park under the ceremonial marble arch designed by Stanford White. Washington Square before noon retained the serenity of a village green. A few nursemaids and mothers sat knitting on benches beside hooded perambulators. Sunshine burnished the dusty rose facade of a northern row of century-old town houses. Water splashed in the central fountain where once the civic gallows stood. Small children played hopscotch. Idlers listened to an old Italian cranking a hurdy-gurdy.

Mary lingered on the fringes of the group, humming along with the sad sounds of the barrel organ. The Italian had a little monkey on a leash all dressed up in red like a bellhop. Double rows of brass buttons flashed sunshine along his tunic. He looked so cute in his pillbox hat, scampering among the onlookers, holding a tin cup. Mary’s happiness gradually gave way to an uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching her. She looked all around and saw no one suspicious. Still, it gave her the heebie-jeebies.

Lacking spare coins to drop into the monkey’s cup, Mary turned and walked off before the animal came her way. She followed a brick-lined diagonal path under the arching sycamores to the southeast corner of the park, exiting onto MacDougal Street and walking slowly south into the mid-morning sun, past dim aromatic coffeehouses and shuttered basement restaurants. The nagging, creepy feeling persisted. She sensed a shadow on her tail and paused frequently to glance over her shoulder.

At the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker, Mary Rogers turned west, toward Sixth. She lived in a gabled brick building in the middle of the block, a survivor from the second decade of the last century. A Sicilian bakery beside the entrance sweetened the air with delicious aromas. Mary stared past her reflection in the show window at stacked pyramids of fresh-baked loaves. She killed time, not wanting to go inside until sure the coast was clear. A man with his dog on a leash stood nearby while a tiny leg lifted by a fire hydrant. Some kind of miniature schnauzer. After a couple of hard-won drops, they continued on their way. She watched them turn the corner. Why should he be tailing her?

Bleecker Street looked peaceful as a country lane. Neither the heavy-set woman selling roast corn nor the white-clad streetsweeper pushing his barrel-shaped Sanitation Department cart appeared in any way suspicious. Mary sighed, laughing inwardly at her foolishness. She climbed the two front steps and stepped into the tiny vestibule, ignoring any bills lurking behind the narrow, filigreed door of her brass mailbox.

Mary Rogers unlocked the front door and climbed the sagging wooden stairs. Her apartment was on the third floor. One flight up, she paused and looked over the railing. What did she expect to see? Nothing. Not even a stray cat. No sound disturbed the enclosing silence. She continued on her way, taking each step with slow caution. Outside her apartment door, she fumbled in her purse for her keyring, clumsily trying the wrong one in the lock. Damn! What was wrong with her? Was she so tired she imagined things?

Mary found the correct key. A soft footstep from behind made her freeze in terror. Before she could turn, strong hands pulled something over her head. Some kind of sack. Her outcry went unheard, stifled by a cloth inside the bag reeking with a strange chemical. Moments before plunging into the black well of unconsciousness, Mary Rogers thought of the hospital where she’d had a tonsillectomy when she was six. The nauseating drip of anesthesia onto the gauze cone covering her face …

I
T WAS AN HOUR
before dawn. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sat on a striped divan in the front room of his hotel suite, listening to the slow clop of hooves outside as ice wagons and milk delivery vans made their early morning rounds. Night’s dark winding sheet shrouded the still-sleeping city in shadows. Faint as the promise of an afterlife, electric streetlamps cast a dim glow on the uncurtained windows. Up well before his usual time, a practice the author initiated following his first Carnegie Hall lecture, Sir Arthur waited, patient as a hunter in his blind, his keen eyes fixed on the writing table in the corner alcove.

Although ordinarily he withheld nothing from his wife, he had not spoken a word to Jean of these nocturnal vigils. He didn’t want to cause undue concern. Not that he doubted his reason or his sanity or anything so melodramatic. First and foremost, he needed to determine if the apparition was merely the by-product of an overactive imagination. His faith in a spirit life remained unshaken in spite of the fact that he had conjured up a ghost costumed like a West End stage illusion.

After many such early mornings spent waiting and watching, whenever he was back in New York between speaking engagements, the knight wondered if his doubts were indeed justified. The specter made no reappearance. Perhaps it had been nothing more than the aftereffects of a bit of undigested beef, as Scrooge supposed upon first discerning his dead partner’s features staring dolefully at him from off the door-knocker. Marley’s ghost was no figment of the miser’s indigestion. On he came, dragging his chains and ledgers.

Sir Arthur rubbed his eyes. What was he thinking of? Investing fictional characters with a reality even Dickens never intended. He suppressed a laugh. His detractors would have a field day with such thoughts as these. How they ridiculed him when he wrote of his belief in fairies, leprechauns, and other wee folks. Not that he blamed them. It did all sound preposterous, until one considered the evidence.