The Puzzle King (7 page)

Arthur Wade’s eyes popped open and he shook his head. For a moment, he was startled and didn’t seem to know where he was.

“Oh Christ, kid, you scared the hell out of me,” he said, wiping the spit off his chin with the back of his hand.

“I have to talk to you, Mr. Wade.”

“What time is it?” Arthur Wade looked at his watch. “Aren’t you supposed to still be at school playing potsie with the rest of the children?”

“I left early because I have something to say to you.” Simon reached into his pocket, pulled out the Hall’s Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer ad and held it up. “You never told me this ran in the newspaper. What about it?”

Arthur Wade shook his head again, only this time he was wide-awake. “What about what? What are you asking me?”

“You owe me money, twenty-five cents. That’s what you said you’d pay me if any of our clients used one of my ads.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” said Arthur Wade. “But while you’re standing there, do you mind getting me a cup of coffee?”

It was as if Arthur Wade hadn’t heard a word he said. Arthur Wade was still the boss and Simon thought he should bring his boss the coffee. But if he did, then they’d be right back where they started: boss and subordinate. Right now, Simon didn’t feel like the subordinate. This wasn’t about work. The man had made false promises and taken credit for Simon’s work. He said awful things. So what if he was the boss? He was a bad man. A liar. A thief even. Let him get his own coffee.

Simon stood impassively, the ad still in his hand.

“I guess you didn’t hear me so let me speak a little louder.
I’D LIKE A CUP OF COFFEE.
”

Simon didn’t budge. “You owe me money,” he said.

Arthur Wade rose to his feet and gripped Simon’s shoulders with both hands. Two red moons broke out on each of his cheeks and his breathing became uneven. “I don’t think you know what you’re saying.” He was pausing between words now. “Do you
know how many little bastards like you would give their eye-teeth to be working at a joint like this?”

Simon tried to pull away from his grasp. “But you said twenty-five cents for every picture that a client used, and this one got used. There’s no getting around that.”

With his right hand, Arthur Wade grabbed Simon under his jaw and squeezed hard. He tried to say something, but his words came out as coughs and hollow honking sounds. He loosened his grip on Simon and finally found his voice.

“Stupid, money-grubbing kike,” he said.

Then he said it again.

The advertisement shook in Simon’s hand. He tried to hold his mind steady. He was searching for something, something specific in his memory. He took mental inventory of all the sketches he’d done, the characters he’d created.

Oh wait, there it was.

The chalk lines from the breaks in the pavement were as vivid as when he drew them more than three years ago on the day of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight—the drawing that Arthur Wade had bought for five dollars to turn into a poster.

A penny for every poster sold, that’s what he had promised him then.

Simon’s intention was to throw a left jab under Arthur Wade’s heart just as Bob Fitzsimmons had done when he knocked out Jim Corbett in the fourteenth round. As Simon was taking his swing, Arthur Wade leaned over to try and catch his breath.

“What the hell?” he cried as his words collided with Simon’s fist.

Arthur Wade heard a snap in his head, felt a sharp pain in his mouth. It tore up through his nose and into his eyes. The blood
was warm and salty in his mouth. He ran his tongue over the place where his front teeth used to be. It felt like broken glass. When he spat out blood, it was flecked with pieces of enamel. One drop spattered on the newspaper clipping that Simon had dropped to the floor.

You’re fired!
He tried to shout, but nothing came except the honking noises he had made earlier.

He sat down and sucked in some air. Finally, he caught his breath enough to try again. “You’re fired!” The words sounded feeble and full of air. And by that time Simon was well on his way down Lexington Avenue.

For her first trip into New York City, Flora Grossman brought two leather valises and one hatbox containing her latest purchase, a pink silk hat with a black velvet trim. She threw her bags on the seat across from her and pressed her face against the glass window when an unfamiliar voice startled her out of her daydreams.

“Excuse me, miss, I certainly don’t mean to impose on your time or give cause for alarm, but I cannot help but notice your hands. My trade being the reading and interpretation of the human palm, I am in a position to recognize a strong and richly detailed hand when I see it. And, if I may say, even though you are so young, I can see a worldliness about you and a life experience that is far beyond your imagining at present. May I?” he asked, making a slight bow while extending his arm to the vacant seat next to hers.

Flora was fifteen and had been in America for nearly four years, long enough for her to have practically lost her accent. “Sure, be my guest. Sorry about all my stuff,” she said, pushing
her bags to one side. “I’m visiting my big sister for a couple of days, and I couldn’t decide what to bring, so I brought everything.”

“I can see that is so,” he said, plopping his lanky six-foot frame into the seat. “Ah, these bones get weary.” He leaned his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes for a few moments, all the while rubbing his temples. Then he opened his eyes, stretched forward, put his elbows on his knees, and stared at her for a few moments. “Your accent. I can’t quite place it. You’re not from around here.”

“Germany,” she said, “I came over with my older sister. I live in Mount Kisco with my aunt and uncle, who aren’t really my aunt and uncle—she’s my mother’s second cousin, but we’re very close. My sister is the one I’m going to visit. She just moved to the city.”

He nodded, folding his hands in front of him. “I don’t mean to trouble you any further, but I wonder if you would you be so kind as to let me study your palms?”

Flora stared down at her hands, turning them over and examining them as if it were the first time she had noticed them.

“Why would you want to study my palms?”

His voice resonated like a trombone. “Please believe me when I say that I have not seen hands like yours since Lilly Doucet’s. Of course, you’ve probably never heard of Lilly Doucet, as she was well before your time, but you must take my word for it, she was a rare one and in possession of a keen and able intellect, most particularly unusual for a female.”

“Lilly Doucet, I’ve never heard of her,” said Flora, still staring at her hands. “It sure is a pretty name. Was she beautiful?”

“A beauty she was,” said the man. “Not unlike yourself, if I
may say. I should add that were you kind enough to grant my request and allow me to read
your
palm, I would dispense with my usual fee and perform my services gratis. Free of charge.”

“Sure, why not?” said Flora, extending her hands then pulling them back immediately. “Ooh, they got a little dirty from carrying all these bags. Sorry.”

“Makes no difference to me.”

“Well then, here they are.” She held her open palms before him, and he looked at them for a long while, moving his lips and making notations in the air with his finger. Then he whistled through his teeth. “Take my word for it, Lilly Doucet has nothing on you. This is as remarkable a palm as I have seen in many years.”

The man’s words flowed in a silky cadence Flora had never heard before. She stared at his long snaky fingers so black they were almost blue. She’d never met a Negro before. When he smiled, his teeth seemed as white as piano keys. She wondered if Negroes had more teeth than other people, because his smile seemed to go on for octaves.

“Tell me my fortune.” she said, twirling one of her blond curls around her finger. “I want to know everything that’s going to happen to me.”

He laughed. “That’s what you think now. But believe me, in my business, a little information goes a long way. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

The man traced the line across the top of her palm under her fingers. “This is where I can see into your heart,” he said. “I can read your loves, adventures of the soul….” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth then followed the crease at the edge of her palm above her thumb that traveled in an arc toward her wrist. “Your life line,” he said, then stretched her fingers with his
left hand and ran his finger up in a straight line up from under her wrist to just under her middle finger. She was aware of how small her hand was in his, and how dry and calloused his skin felt. When he was finished, he rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes. “Oh my,” he said, his eyes still shut.

“What do you see?” Flora placed her hands over her heart. “Will I fall in love? Will I travel the world? Oh please, tell me my fortune.”

The man opened his eyes and put his hands on his knees. “You will live a long rich life, that is for sure.”

Flora smiled at this news. “And what else? What do you know?”

“Young lady, I can only say this, and I hope you will listen well.”

“Yes, I’m listening,” she said, the smile still on her face.

“You must hold on,” said the man. “That’s my advice to you. Hold on, and never forget who you are.”

“What do you mean, ‘hold on’?” she asked. “Hold on to what?”

The man got up from his seat. “That’s what I have to say. Thank you so much for your time. I am most obliged.” He made a slight bow and began to walk down the aisle.

“Wait,” she shouted, “wait one more moment. I didn’t even catch your name.”

“It wasn’t meant to be caught,” he said with a smile, and he strode down the aisle of the train then pulled open the heavy door that led him to the next car.

Flora had the feeling that she was falling. It was the same disoriented sensation she’d felt when she’d taken a spill in her kitchen back in Germany years earlier. Her mother had asked her
to reach up to a shelf in the cupboard and bring down the jar of flour she needed to make pastry dough. She’d picked the jar from the shelf and had taken a step backward. Somehow, she lost her balance, and her feet went out from under her. The fall seemed to take forever—long enough for her to anticipate that she’d be hurt, and probably badly. When she landed on her tailbone, the glass jar smacked against the kitchen floor and splintered. One of the jagged pieces gashed Flora’s right leg from behind her knee down to her calf. She remembered sitting on the floor, blood and flour and broken glass all around her. She felt nauseated and faint from the pain in her tailbone, and she remembered little else except her father shouting at her not to move. He’d lifted her out from the bloody mess on the floor and carried her into the bathroom, where he put her down into the tub and began washing her wounds.

Right after that, her father got sick. Her mother said it was influenza, but Flora was convinced it was her blood that had infected him. Three months later he was dead, and though she never told anyone that she carried this guilt, every time she looked at the scar that ran like a scimitar down her leg, she could see her father’s taut face and feel the gentleness of his hands as he swooped her up on that day and cleaned out her cut.

Unconsciously, she rubbed her hand down her right leg as the train slowed down and slid into the tunnel under Grand Central Station. All around her was darkness. The cars shuddered and clacked, and she could smell the sulfurous smell of metal wheels grinding against metal track. Even though she was seated in her rattan chair on a train coming into New York City, Flora felt as if she were back in her old house in Germany. She could feel herself falling. Falling and wondering how bad it would be.

She gathered her matching red-and-white valises and stepped off the train. Flora studied the crowds of people milling around the emptying train. The Negro man was gone, but she saw women in muslin dresses so sheer that she could make out the shapes of their breasts underneath. She watched as porters unloaded crates filled with oranges and bolts of satin, and down at the end of the vast platform, she could make out the form of an organ grinder with a monkey on his head. The monkey wore a banana hat strapped under his chin and jumped about collecting silver coins from anyone who would pay. New York. Already it was as exotic as she hoped it would be.

With all that was going on around her, Flora almost forgot to search for her sister, although Seema would be hard to miss in any crowd. At nearly five-foot-ten, she towered over most other women and an awful lot of men. With her long black hair (“shiny like a seal” was how their Uncle Paul described it) and green eyes with gold flecks, Seema was the most striking of the three Grossman sisters. Margot, the youngest sister, had the makings of a real beauty: full lips, soft almond-shaped eyes, and the grace and swiftness of a fawn. But years of worry had weighted her down and drained her complexion of its natural rosiness.

What Seema didn’t have naturally, she made up for with her flair and elegance. She was lean and angular, with lips that sloped and peaked like sand castles. Her poppy-red lipstick was vivid against her creamy white skin, and though Seema laughed it off when her friends nicknamed her Seamless, that pretty much summed her up. Flora was heading toward the organ grinder when she heard a familiar smoky voice calling behind her. “Hey Chatterbug, where are you going?”

When Flora first came over to live with her aunt and uncle,
Uncle Paul nicknamed her Chatterbug because, he said, she’d talk to anyone, even the ladybugs who lived in the backyard. He called Seema CeCe and, although his wife’s name was Hannah, he called her Harry. Hannah called him Ziggy, because she claimed he looked more like a Ziggy than he did a Paul. Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul shared code words that could summon up a memory in a heartbeat. That’s how it was with them. They had private jokes and secrets and did whatever they could to reinforce the clubbiness of their family. They lived in a colonial-style corner house in Mount Kisco surrounded by privet and linden trees that smelled like sweet lime blossoms on a summer day. Their family was very close. Paul and Hannah’s daughter, Ruth, grown now and out of the house, still wore her mother’s gold baby ring on a chain around her neck, and never a week went by that they didn’t receive a funny note or drawing in the mail from their son, Lev, who had recently moved to Chicago.