The Other Typist (24 page)

“Pardon me,” came Teddy’s voice. He bowed deep at the waist in Odalie’s direction, and it was understood he was requesting a dance.

“Oh!” The little involuntary exclamation escaped me. Suddenly all eyes—Odalie’s, Louise’s, and Teddy’s—were trained on me. Unable to explain my shock away, I merely shrugged.

Aware that we were being rude, Odalie lifted her head in Teddy’s direction and bared her teeth in what was a fierce and impenetrable second cousin to a smile. “Of course,” she said through a set of stiff, glistening, perfectly white piano keys. Teddy took her hand, and she rose from her chair with her face tilted up defiantly, like a flower blooming in spite of harsh conditions.

Her body language plainly stated she did not want to be within half a mile of Teddy, much less cheek-to-cheek with him on the dance floor. I’m sure she would’ve appreciated it if I had intervened and deflected him somehow, but as a woman, there was little recourse available to me. I suppose I could have pressed myself on Teddy in Odalie’s place—insisting he dance with me instead and perhaps even attempting to vamp him a bit—but such transactions were utterly foreign to me, and in this capacity I was rather hopeless. Instead I sat in silence, ignoring Louise as she prattled stubbornly to me as though I were Odalie’s proxy, and anxiously watched as Teddy steered Odalie around the dance floor.

They cut a fine line, but the stiffness between them was obvious, even from a distance. Her head remained turned away from him at all times, cocked to the right in a very serious manner as though she were imitating one of those professional dancers who perform flamboyant exhibitions in dance halls. I observed Teddy was, in fact, very light on his toes; not surprising, given his thin frame and slight stature. They danced a full waltz, and by the end of it, to my relief, another man had cut in upon them. But Teddy, I noticed, never strayed too far from Odalie, and cut in to dance with her several more times as the evening wore on. Four orchestra songs later I dimly perceived someone hovering near my seat at the table.

I was barely conscious of it when a thin, nasal male voice inquired whether I’d care to dance with him. I looked up and in astonishment saw Max Brinkley blinking down at me, the magnified look of his monocled eye striking a comical incongruence with his unmagnified other eye. Still a little intimidated by the Brinkleys and apprehensive about the legitimacy of our stay, I rose to my feet automatically as he reached for my hand.

“Please, Miss Baker, tell me why your friend seems to be having all the fun,” he said as we set off gingerly in a foxtrot. “I’m sure Pembroke, equitable old chap that he is, would want you to enjoy yourself, too.”

“Well,” I muttered with an awkward grimace, suddenly feeling like the imposter I was, “you know Pembroke . . .”

“Sometimes I wonder if you can
really
know Pembroke,” Mr. Brinkley said. A tremor of panic ran through me before I realized Mr. Brinkley’s comment was an epistemological observation, rather than a social accusation. “My goodness! Are you cold, my dear?” Mr. Brinkley inquired, noticing my involuntary shiver. He glanced up at the stars, as though some celestial thermometer might be hidden there. “I suppose it
is
a bit chillier than usual out tonight.”

“Yes, Mr. Brinkley—”

“Max.”

“Max. Actually I
am
cold, come to think of it. I think I’d better run and fetch my shawl, if that’s all right.”

“Of course, my dear.” He stopped, mid-foxtrot, and took a gallant step back. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I forced you to freeze?” This was not an epistemological question; it was a rhetorical one. He bowed, his monocle staying miraculously perched on the apple of his cheek throughout, and I smiled. “Just don’t forget, now, to come back downstairs and have a good time. That’s an order,” he said. I nodded obediently, recalling once having read in a society article that Max Brinkley had been a Navy man. I thanked him and scurried in the direction of the house, which was now lit up like a blazing Christmas tree.

I wasn’t really cold, and didn’t really want my shawl, but I did want to find Odalie. Both she and Teddy had completely vanished. I checked the interior of the house first (stopping by our room upstairs to pick up my shawl, just in case I should run into Max Brinkley again). The house was quite large, with many rooms, and there were so many people milling about that as soon as I had finished searching all of the rooms I worried that I’d perhaps missed Teddy and Odalie in passing and I searched the whole house all over again. By the second go-round, I was somewhat satisfied they were not to be found indoors. I’d grown sick of the house by that time, where the gay atmosphere had seemed to turn more septic than it had outdoors. The fug of cigarettes hung densely in the air of every room, making me cough, and in opening a broom closet I had accidentally blundered into a necking couple who were not in the least pleased to have me open the door and witness their activities.

Back outside, I surveyed the terrace. Teddy and Odalie were not at any of the tables. Squinting at the passing faces of each turning couple revealed they had not returned to the canvas platform for another dance. I strolled the gardens: first the wide lawn that led down to the beach, then the little topiary maze. Moonlight streamed down, turning the leaves of the hedges silvery and making the neatly trimmed foliage appear like walls of cut stone. I hesitated. I had never much liked topiary mazes or the impetus behind them; the notion that being lost could be fun had always struck me as the stuff from which nightmares are born. And then suddenly it came to me. I remembered seeing a greenhouse on a hill just beyond the topiary maze, a small distance off the west wing of the house. If Odalie had wanted to talk to Teddy privately and was fearful of what he might reveal, I could envision her choosing to do it there.

As I drew up to the greenhouse, the windows were dark. It was an elaborately white-gabled affair, a true relic of the Gilded Age. I walked along the inclined path that led to the greenhouse entrance with a feeling of foreboding so potent, it almost caused me to stop and go back. The sounds of music and laughter tinkled dimly from far across the lawn, as though it emanated from some ghostly echo of a party rather than the boisterous affair I’d just left. When I tried the door handle, I found myself half hoping it would be locked, but it turned easily enough. Once inside, a thick humidity instantly enveloped my skin, and I inhaled the rich aroma of moist peat moss and wet ferns. The echo of the door boomed loudly throughout the large space as I pulled it shut behind me, and I was very still for several minutes. As I stood there straining to listen, at first I could only hear the dripping of wet plants and the gurgling of an ornamental fountain or two. But then I heard it—the distant sound of two voices talking in hushed tones. I listened for another moment; the voices definitely belonged to Odalie and Teddy, and despite the commotion I’d made shutting the door it did not appear they had detected my entry. The sound was coming from the far end of the greenhouse. Very quietly, I made my way along the stone pavers that led in the direction of the sound’s emanation.

I glimpsed the butt of a cigarette glow red as someone—it had to be Odalie—inhaled. Crouching down next to some sort of alien-looking, pointy-leafed bromeliad, I looked on and quietly tried to catch my breath. As my eyes adjusted to the dark of the greenhouse, the moonlight coming through the glass ceiling began to illuminate the two figures standing before me. Between them a cherub capered, a bow and arrow clutched in his chubby grasp and water gurgling at his stony toes. My ears eagerly worked to pick up the thread of conversation. Teddy was doing most of the talking, and slowly but surely I realized I had walked halfway into some sort of long-winded explanation. For the second time that day, I listened to Teddy tell the story of his cousin’s unfortunate death. When he reached the end, Odalie exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and regarded him impassively.

“That’s a very sad story,” she finally said.

“Indeed.”

“Oh, but I rather wish you’d never told it to me!” Odalie exclaimed, suddenly looking up from her cigarette coquettishly.

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, well, because I’ve always wanted to visit Newport. It sounds so lovely! And now if I ever go”—she leaned toward him with an expression of sweet sympathy—“I’ll be sure to think of your story and how terrible that gruesome accident was!” As she spoke, a befuddled expression engraved itself with increasing intensity on Teddy’s face. Odalie glimpsed it, and in response her own manner turned sprightly and cheerful now. “You see, I’d hate to spoil it. I’ve never been.”

“Never been!” Teddy spluttered uncontrollably. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never been to Newport?”

“I do,” she replied. By now her tone had shifted. It still had all the pretenses of friendliness, but there was also a deadly inflection to it, as though you could almost hear the dry, papery rattle of a venomous snake’s tail. Teddy swallowed hard and stared at her lips. She cocked her head innocently. “Yes. Never been to Newport. Can you imagine?”

“No . . . I can’t,” he stammered.

“Well, perhaps you should try,” she said, the mocking innocence gone from her voice now and in its place a flat, dull tone. And with that she strode away, swishing through the overgrowth of the greenhouse and passing perilously close to where I remained crouched and hiding. It was as though a bell had rung, and Odalie—consummately triumphant boxer that she was—had been called back to her corner.

When I crawled into bed later that night, I knew two things for certain. I knew Odalie hoped to never see Teddy again. I also knew from the expression on Teddy’s face as he watched her stride away that it would not be long before he came to find her.

A
nd then, just as abruptly as it had begun, our beach holiday was over. If Odalie and I were ever to drop in on the Brinkleys again, I daresay they would not be very glad to have us back. For one thing, we finagled our way into a week’s invitation but left after merely two nights. Moreover, we departed with the sort of abrupt haste that can only be interpreted as a total lack of common courtesy and respect for one’s hosts.

As I remember it, after her exchange with Teddy in the greenhouse, Odalie retired to our room for the night. I followed her and feigned ignorance (she told me nothing of her interaction with him). We prepared for bed, but it was apparent there was very little rest to be had. Instead of crawling under the covers and joining me, Odalie turned out the lamp and proceeded to roam the room like an agitated jungle cat. I knew then it was unlikely we would be staying much longer at the Brinkleys’ estate. As I slept (or pretended to sleep, rather), she paced at the foot of our bed in silence, gnawing indelicately from time to time at her fingernails. About an hour and a half before the sun came up, Odalie suddenly grew very still and very calm. She sat down in the middle of the rug on the floor and closed her eyes. I had never seen her do this before and found it very queer. It was almost as though she was praying, but even now, to this day, I doubt Odalie has ever prayed about anything.

When her eyes finally snapped open again, the morning sun was streaming in through the window. She telephoned for a taxi and packed our bags with a deliberate orderliness I was unaccustomed to seeing her exhibit. In general, Odalie’s actions were dominated by a very haphazard air—the world around her conspired to collaborate with her rhythms, not the other way around. I remember finding it odd to see her move around in such a rigid manner. Somehow I knew better than to ask questions or strike up a conversation that afternoon; rather, I very simply and obediently followed suit with this change in our itinerary, grateful to be returning to the familiar city I’d always known. I was perceptive enough to intuit something dark was brewing, and I had it in my head I would be safer back home. One might be inclined to point out what a fool I was, but of course I couldn’t know it at the time.

When the taxi pulled into the drive, the butler alerted the Brinkleys, consequently causing them to come down to see if anything was the matter. I still remember the look of reproach Max Brinkley shot me through his monocle, confused and thoroughly disapproving. Odalie conveyed a series of hasty and halfhearted regrets to our hosts, who shook our hands politely enough but who each arched an eyebrow and frowned over our shoulders the whole time at the driver as he loaded our luggage into the trunk. The final farewells were said, during which I felt Odalie’s hand on my arm, the skin of her hand as soft as velvet, her grip as unyielding as iron. And then in record speed I found myself in the back of the taxi. The tires spun over the gravel, and the thin, frowning faces of Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley receded until they were no more than two expressionless blurs.

Of course, I assumed we were going to the train station, so when Odalie asked the driver how much he would charge to take us all the way into the city I was a bit surprised. I was even more surprised when he named an exorbitant sum and she agreed to it straightaway, not bothering to barter in spite of the fact we both knew she could very well have gotten him down to half the price he named. It took us three hours at top-notch speed, interrupted only by a solitary stop at a filling station, in order to arrive at our destination. Throughout our entire journey Odalie periodically twisted about to peer through the cramped, oval-shaped back window of the taxi. I looked back a few times myself and half expected to see Teddy running maniacally behind us, trying to catch hold of the automobile’s bumper.

We arrived in front of our hotel without further incident sometime in the afternoon. During our ride back into the city, I had realized summer was lazily fading away. Already the days were beginning to grow shorter. For the remainder of that afternoon and on into the evening, Odalie appeared jittery. The lunch hour had come and gone while we were still in the back of the taxi, but Odalie did not appear to notice its absence, let alone the fact it was now time for dinner. There was a good amount of fresh food in the apartment ice-box, but she only took one bite of this or that simply to lay the dish down and walk away, forgetting all about it. She was the same with books and magazines. She picked one or the other up and turned a few pages merely to set it back down again, and all the while the blind, distracted stare never left her eyes. Several times she got up to open the curtains and peer out the window into the night and then, with a small, almost imperceptible shudder, drew them again as though recoiling from some unseen specter.

By the time the shrill ring of the telephone sounded, she nearly jumped out of her skin. It was Gib, of course. I could tell from her responses he was demanding to know why we’d disappeared and where we’d been. Or rather, where
Odalie
had been, as I suspect Gib was not in all honesty greatly concerned about my own whereabouts. From across the room, I could just about make out the tinny, canned sound of squawking that emanated from the telephone. Somewhere in the city, Gib was at the other end of the line, angry as spit. I listened to Odalie as she tried to soothe him with that mellifluous voice of hers.

“Oh, don’t fuss so much. . . . Sometimes a girl just needs a little vacation. . . . Well, of course I’m always here if there’s a problem. . . . What do you mean? What’s happened?”

He’d sent little Charlie Whiting out on a delivery, and the dumb kid had gotten himself picked up by the police. Oddly, this piece of bad news seemed to wash over Odalie as something of a relief. Her rigid body melted back into its catlike slouch. She hung up the receiver and began plotting straightaway, happy to be presented with a new distraction. But before I tell all about how Odalie maneuvered to get Charlie off the hook the next day at the precinct, I’d like to take a moment here and explain a little bit about my state of mind at the time.

By now, the outside observer has probably intuited our interaction with Teddy had not yet fully run its course, and something serious was about to happen. It is important to me that I tell why I did not listen to my better judgment and distance myself from the impending catastrophe.

During my time with Odalie, I’d heard so many stories aimed at explaining her origin, each new fable wonderfully fantastic and implausible in its own right. I suppose I’d gotten used to the idea Odalie’s past was ultimately unknowable—and in some ways it made her rather mythical in my mind. But the story Teddy had told me out on the swimmers’ raft somehow changed everything, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I suspected his story was the true one. Moreover, I sensed there was an element to Teddy’s version Odalie wished to keep concealed from public view. It was the only way to explain her otherwise bizarrely potent aversion to the otherwise innocuous-seeming undergrad. And besides, the bracelets—those incontrovertible bits of mineral and metal—had somehow set Teddy’s story apart from all the others. Unlike the Hungarian aristocrat, whose dapper suits and top hat turned to ash immediately upon contradiction and blew back into whimsical vapor from whence they came, the bracelets were very tangible objects I had witnessed on more than one occasion with my own eyes. Odalie’s own explanation to me about the origin of their existence—a deliberately vague and shoddily wrought riches-to-rags story about a doting father and a tragically deceased sister named Violet—was never terribly convincing (when I brought up her sister’s name less than a week after she’d told the tale she had absently responded, “Who?”—and uncomfortably, I had been forced to remind her). Not to mention the fact I’d overheard her the night she’d told the Lieutenant Detective the bracelets were an engagement present. Now it was looking like this latter bit of information may have very well been the truth. Or, at least, a half-truth.

I say all this because while one might judge me a fool, they would be mistaken to think me a total babe in the woods. I knew by then who and what Odalie was (although I readily admit I did not yet know in full—that would come later). Teddy’s effect on her nerves did not bode well for her innocence. From my days spent sitting in front of the stenotype taking dictation in the interrogation room, I knew how to tell the difference between the agitated nerves of an innocent man and the agitated nerves of a guilty man, which with their raw, paranoid edges always jangled about more loudly in the end and gave him away. The long and short of it is I knew there was a good chance Odalie was in fact Ginevra. And I knew if that was indeed the truth of it, there was certainly a reason she had made the switch.

Why then, one might wonder, did I remain at Odalie’s side, concealing her secret and following her around as she conducted further illicit business—the very brand of business, as I have already mentioned, of which I did not approve in the first place? I have said here I am no babe in the woods, and this much is true; I am no innocent. But only now, with the added advantage of hindsight, do I see how I may have appeared (to some) shrouded by the pall of malice from the very first moment I met Odalie. The word
obsession
has been bandied about rather recklessly by the newspapers. When I was not her condemner, I was her collaborator and, all too quickly following suit, her coolie. One might question why I was so drawn to Odalie, why I was so eager to ingratiate myself to her, if not for unnatural reasons. Yet I must insist again that there was nothing improper in my devotion to Odalie.

This is not to say I didn’t want anything from Odalie. In the months we spent together, I watched countless others—men and women alike—as they swarmed around her, fawning over her, practically pawing at her, all of them wanting something from her. They had disgusted me. But I realize now how I, too, craved something from Odalie, and while in comparison to the desires of her other admirers my desire was much nobler in spirit, it was nonetheless like any other hunger in that it was driven by appetite and need.

It is difficult to put into words what I wanted from Odalie; language too easily corrupts, you see, and falls short. Once, while at the Bedford Academy, we were made to learn all about the carnivorous plants of the Americas. Most of the other schoolchildren were fascinated by the violent Venus flytrap, with its hinged leaves like a series of tiny bear traps. But I was more intrigued with the pitcher plant, with its much more alluring tubes shaped like upside-down bells, and the simple premise of its sweet nectar bait. Odalie was like that for me, and I suspect for other people, too. The promise of potentially being the recipient of her love and adoration was a sweet nectar one couldn’t resist; like the insect drawn to his peril, you stepped toward it willingly.

Before you think me dreadfully Sapphic, perhaps it would do to remind you there’s a great history of friendship between women—bonds that are pure and true and do not take on the more unfortunate shades of impropriety. Our mothers’ generation certainly understood it. Why, isn’t the cornerstone of Victorian girlhood founded on such wonderful intimacies? I believe, with all my heart, the generations before us knew a type of loyalty in love that our modern society does not understand at all.
An acute cruel streak,
the doctor here wrote next to my name. I suspect he thinks me an outright monster, but I am no monster. He misunderstands my motivations. I only wanted the giggles, the held hands, the whispered confidences, all the cool kisses upon my cheek that had evaded me throughout my own childhood. And in answering for the rest of my actions . . . well, it is natural for us to feel some measure of possessive zeal for the things we love. We cannot help the fact we humans are territorial creatures, after all.

I am rambling, perhaps, but there is a point to all of this. My point is
motive
. From the moment I heard Teddy’s story, I became abstractly aware that an invisible clock had been set to ticking. I also understood this clock was ticking down to something, but why and to what event of course I could not know just then.

•   •   •

THE MONDAY AFTER
we returned from the Brinkleys, we awoke to find a brilliant red dawn sky overhead. As the sun slogged upward and red gave way to blood orange, the colors vibrated with diminishing intensity. It was as if summer itself were burning off the last of its halcyon days. It was still warm out, but already the air was thinner and laced with the suggestion of cleaner, crisper days ahead.

Though we had arranged for a longer holiday, Odalie had determined we should return to work that day, in part, I assumed, to take care of the minor predicament into which Charlie had gotten himself. We rose, dressed, and made our way down to the precinct. Once through the entrance door, the Sergeant did not seem particularly surprised to see us. I think he had come to accept the fact Odalie would come and go as she pleased, and his choices were to either twist his mustache and grumble about it or not twist his mustache and not grumble about it. But Iris was flustered by our return. She was a woman who took comfort in routine. She had parceled out the work very precisely in our absence and now found herself obliged to spontaneously redistribute it. She huffed and huffed and hardly said hello, while Marie flew over to us and shook us with a friendly, brute force, her fingers now thickly swollen from her increasingly obvious state of pregnancy.

“Why on Earth would anyone cut short a holiday?! Oh, you little fools!” she exclaimed in an accusing voice, but her shining face betrayed her true delight.

“Just as I feared,” the Lieutenant Detective chimed in. He sauntered in our direction, pushing a hand through his hair. “You cannot go more than two days without me.” It might’ve been directed at Odalie, but for some reason he winked at me. I stiffened. I felt the back of my neck grow hot.

“Well, you could take a nice long holiday, Lieutenant Detective, and we could retest that theory,” I replied on instinct. At this, Marie shook her hand at the wrist and whistled, as if to say
touché!
I watched as the Lieutenant Detective’s grin slid into a frown, and felt that familiar sensation of satisfaction tinged with regret.