The Flaming Corsage (27 page)

“He looks like a real gentleman, is what I say. Such fine duds he’s got. The genuine article.”

“A gentleman, oh yes.” And Maginn, visibly perturbed by the remark, turned to the barmaid. “And this is Cherry. Say hello to Edward, Cherry.”

“Howdja do, Edward,” Cherry said.

Edward smiled at Cherry.

“And pour him a brandy, the best we have for this
gentleman.
Cherry, Edward, played the twelve-year-old virgin in the last house she worked. But she swiftly aged into this
million-dollar set of tits, with only irony for a hymen. Does Cherry interest you, Edward?”

Edward said nothing.

“Let the gentleman sit down with his drink,” Nell said. “Let him get a word in.”

“Of course. Sit, Edward, sit. Get a word in, if you have any left after that theatrical debacle.”

Edward and Maginn sat in the plush, facing each other.

“Gentleman. You called him a gentleman,” Maginn said to Nell. “This is Eddie, a mick to the heel of his boot, transformed by adroit social maneuvering into the elite, affluent
Edward Daugherty, Esquire, famous playwright, a bit infamous lately, though. He recently had a major opening night with his new play, staged with considerable fanfare at the Hall. But, alas, it was
only another facade, a mongoloid mishmash, an ambitious botch that closed with a wail and a snivel after one performance. My condolences, Edward. Did you like my critique of it?”

“At what point did you become an assassin, Maginn?”

“Uh-oh, he’s getting personal, Nell. Time for the parade, get a bit of life in this party.”

Nell left the room, and Maginn dropped his cigar into the spittoon by his chair, then coughed and spat into it, the spew of rotted lungs, Edward hoped.

“You haven’t touched your drink, Edward, and you seem depressed. I can’t blame you, given the burden you carry, some of it my doing, I fear. Truly sorry, old fellow. I berate
myself constantly for what I did. You can see how I’m suffering here. But listen, when you see the parade you’ll perk up, old Edward Edward Edward. But tell the truth, now. Isn’t
that name a sham all by itself? Why not call yourself Eduardo, or Edmundo, or Oedipus, for chrissake? You always went for older women, didn’t you? Why not just be Eddie, like other micks?
Edward exudes pretense. But I’ll wager it wears well in your social set.”

“You invented a brilliant scheme, Maginn—bravura insight into the very worst human impulses. And I actually might’ve died, except for Giles’s faulty aim.”

“I appreciate the compliment,” Maginn said, “but you overestimate my intention. It
was
a clever scheme, and I revel at the genius in it. But I was only answering
Giles’s little joke—at least you got
that
right in your wretched melodrama. Who knew Giles harbored such violence? I saw him as one of the more gentle bigots of his tribe.
Remember his joke about the Irishman whose cousin suffered two heart attacks and died, and the mick asked, ‘Did he die of the first attack or the second?’ Giles enjoyed jokes at the expense of others. A pity he didn’t live to enjoy mine.

“My plan was to repay your joke with my own, but then Giles decides to atomize the useless Felicity bitch, and his own vapid self. What an oblique bonanza! Sorry he got a bit of you in the
doing, but look at you! You’ve recovered splendidly. And I knew our lovely Melissa would survive, of course. The world loves soiled innocents, when they’re beautiful and repentant of
their sin. Melissa, it must be said, repents well, but doesn’t know what sin is, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’m surprised she’s not here working for you.”

“She’s beyond my means and always was,” said Maginn. “But not beyond yours. Did you know she put Cully up to that rape of Felicity? Perverse little twat. She told Cully
she’d be his if he’d rape Felicity with her looking on. She wanted to watch, and then comfort the poor, ravaged victim.”

“More lies, Maginn.”

“Cully told me this himself the day he left New York. I was with him before and after his little orgy. I even put him on the road with that story about the Albany police being after him.
It was time to be rid of the lowlife pest. Didn’t Melissa tell you any of this? I was with her too, earlier that day. In your room.”

“If your fiction was half as imaginative as your lies, Maginn, you’d have been famous years ago.”

“You don’t know the truth when you hear it, Edward. You never did. But forget that and cop a sneak at these wenches.”

Nell entered ahead of three women, drew Cherry into the head of the line, then stood aside and let the four whores parade for Edward. Cherry opened her blouse, raised her offerings with her
hands.

“We have two more in the stable,” Maginn said, “but they’re busy at the moment,” and he walked to the second whore and caressed her belly. “This one carries
her snake-head dildo at the ready and wears an Egyptian headdress, suitable for the moving pictures. I call her Putonalissa. A French artist I met in New Orleans sketched her costume for me on a
bar towel.”

“New Orleans,” Edward said. “When you went down to settle up with Cully?”

The remark stopped Maginn’s spiel, and he gave Edward a twisted look; then continued.

“This young lady with the mask and open robe we call Complicity,” he said, parting the whore’s robe with both hands. “Sweet young thing, but she carries a whip. You
don’t know what to expect from Complicity.”

The third whore, a blonde, wore only a gown of transparent white chiffon, and Maginn lifted the chiffon to pat her bush. “You probably guessed the name of this fair-haired beauty
already,” he said. “The lovely Beatrina, our
pièce de résistance
, by far our prettiest, and most angelic. I’d say her dress was suitable for a trip to
Paradise, or even a walk down the old church aisle.”

Edward drank his brandy in two gulps to be rid of it. Maginn, seething with archaic rage against the divine arbiter of talent, trying to commit murder-by-whores to avenge his meager inheritance
of the myth, droned on, urging the women to display themselves, even Nell, who did up her skirt, and whose freckled thighs, Edward thought with faded memory, had widened since the State Fair.

“So there you have it, Edward. Which one would cheer you most? Or would you like two? Or all five? It’s on the house, you know.”

The whores seated themselves on the sofa to await Edward’s decision and Cherry went back to the bar, her blouse askew. Nell poured Edward a new brandy and brought it to him. He sipped it,
smiled at Maginn.

“I can’t tell you how much it’s meant, Maginn, seeing all this,” he said. “Ever since I met you I’ve overpraised you, especially that beastly fiction no one
ever published. I got you a job you weren’t equal to, and even abided your envious tirades. I concluded you were the eternally inadequate man,
Homo invidiosus
, but all things keep
striving for that higher form that nature designs for them, and I see tonight that you’ve climbed up from pigsty to pimpdom, up from creative myth to a career in vice, up from skulking
whorehound to grand cuntmaster with a troop of trollops. Do you like that phrase? It’s very Maginnish. Vaudeville tonight! The Grand Cuntmaster Maginn and His Troop of Twisted Trollops. One
night only! When the matter is ready the form will come, as I’ve been saying for years, Maginn, and you’ve evolved into absolute parity with nullity. In any world worth inhabiting, you
now mean nothing at all.”

“Very good, Edward, very droll. Are you finished?”

“Not quite. There’s Cully’s confession that you incited Giles to murder. Poor Cully. He asked you for bail money
and you failed him.”

“I didn’t have it. And there is no confession.”

“True, his confession disappeared from the New Orleans police files, in the same way you disappeared when police came to
The Argus
to ask you about Cully. But my investigator turned up the detective who took Cully’s confession, and he’s got his notes and he’ll testify. So will Clubber. So
will I. And I wouldn’t put it past Melissa to put in a good word for you. My man also found a fellow who says Cully’s killers were paid to hang him, paid by somebody who looked like
you.”

“You’re pathetic, Daugherty.”

“I often tell myself that. Even so, I’ve documented this, and when I got your letter I gave my report to
The Argus.
They’ll print it this week, with an editorial urging
the case be reopened.”

Maginn picked up the spittoon beside his chair and heaved its cigar butts, slops, and globs of phlegm in Edward’s face. Edward snatched the spittoon from Maginn’s hand and swung it
in a backhanded smash against his head. As Maginn staggered, Edward swung forward and smashed him full in the face, and Maginn’s face exploded with blood.

“Nell!” Maginn called up out of his weakness, collapsed sideways over his armchair, spitting out pieces of broken teeth, “Nell, do him! Do him!”

Edward turned to look for Nell and saw her right arm swinging a piece of lead pipe. It hit high on the left side of his head, and as he went down he saw Cherry moving toward him with a rag and a
bottle of what he already knew was their chloroform.

H
E FELT THE
tongue on his face and thought of a deer at the salt lick. He’d been walking down the sloping corridor after Katrina and saw steam
shovels moving great slabs of broken marble to block the exit. The way out now was down, down the high, grassy slope past the broken statuary. It led him to the edge of a high precipice over an
abyss, and he felt the onset of his vertigo. A finger touched his outer thigh and he turned to see the beautiful young whore. “Pressure makes it pop out,” she said. “You’re
less of a sybarite these days, but nobody cares. The sinners are too chaotic.” He realized the paper he’d had in his hand was missing. He looked where it might have fallen, then saw it
in his other hand. He touched his hip. His wallet was gone, as was the whore, and he knew that from here forward, something would vanish with every breath he took.

He opened his eye into pain and moonlight and the breath of the animal licking his hair. Will it bite my face? He closed his eye, felt in the dirt and found a small glass bottle at his
fingertips. He dug it out and knew from its shape it once held paregoric. The planet Neptune was discovered by mathematical analysis of the movement of another planet. Such has happened. The tongue
is a dog, not a deer, licking my pain. He licked his own lips and realized the dog was licking his blood. He tasted a sweetness that was not blood. The chloroform. He raised his hand and swiped the
dog’s jaw with the bottle. The animal yelped and Edward opened an eye to see it standing off, waiting. It barked once. Edward growled and the dog ran, a whelp.

He could see tall weeds, but the earth was bare and moist beneath his face, and smelled of ashes. The pain was an ax blade. He did not recognize the weeds or the buildings beyond them. He knew
only the moon, and the heat of the dark, early morning, and the burned earth where his cheek touched it. He raised his head into new pain that might kill him. If it did not, he would raise himself.
Do not go too fast. Up, and roll. Now sit. He saw light in an upper room of a house, another light at street level. By the light of the moon he saw that the weeds around him had grown over, and
through, charred remnants of trash. He closed his eyes to see how to get down the precipice to where Katrina was.

The light at street level came from a window whose painted lettering announced “Saloon.” Edward saw two men talking with the barkeep. He pushed open the half door, went to the
bar.

“A double whiskey.”

“Christ, what happened to you?”

“Somebody hit me with a pipe.”

“You know who did it?”

“A woman I knew a long time ago.”

“They don’t forget, do they?” the barman said.

He wet a towel and handed it to Edward.

“Wipe your face, pal.”

Edward took the towel while the barman poured whiskey. The blood on the towel was abundant, streaked white with ashes. He wiped his eyes, his mouth. He drank the whiskey, returned the glass for
a refill.

“What street is this?” he asked.

“Dallius.”

“How far are we from Division?”

“Three blocks.”

“They didn’t carry me far.”

“Who didn’t?”

“You know a place called the Good Life?”

“Dorgan’s. They closed early tonight.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m gettin’ their regulars.”

Edward drank the second whiskey. The barman gave him another wet towel. He wiped his ear, blotted his head, blood still oozing. How much had he lost?

“You wanna go the hospital? I’ll get a cop’ll take ya,” the barman said.

“I’ll go later. What do I owe you?” He reached into his pocket, wallet gone. “I can’t pay you. They robbed me.”

“You had a big night.”

“I’ll come back and pay.”

“If you ever get home. You want another shot?”

“The pain is terrific.”

“Have another.”

Edward drank his third double.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Grady.”

“You’re a man worth knowing, Grady. If I don’t die I’ll be back. Can I keep this towel?”