The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (14 page)

“There is but one thing certain,” I said, changing the direction of talk. “No matter when we’ve received our gifts, we’ve all been blessed. Our uniqueness alone is enough to justify our special place in the
world. But even more, our destiny insists we use our gifts to show others who they really are or show them what, in an ideal world, they could become. It may shock them at first, but, deep down, we open their eyes to greater possibilities.”

Iell clapped her hands together as if my answer were a present. “So you believe that your act edifies your audience, Mr. Fortuno?”

“Not only mine, Madam. All of our acts.”

Iell held up her index finger in a most charming way. “Now here I would disagree. I do not believe we educate our audiences. I believe we frighten them and, in doing so, make them feel better about the dullness of their own lives. We don’t open their eyes, Mr. Fortuno, we give them permission to keep them shut.” She glanced over at Emma. “Don’t you think that’s true, Emma? Are we not the nightmare? The gargoyles at the edge of their world?”

I didn’t give Emma a chance to respond. “I think you underestimate us,” I said.

Iell looked at me, clearly surprised.

“We’re not gargoyles,” I said, groping for something more significant to say. “We’re gatekeepers.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “If anyone’s a gatekeeper around here, it’s Barnum.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed. “But his protection permits us to reveal our true selves. We owe him our loyalty and appreciation.”

“Appreciation?” Iell interjected.

“Absolutely. In fact, to show my personal appreciation, I recently fetched a parcel for him in Chinatown, and I did it in the full light of day.” I was boasting, hoping to impress her with my bravery.

Iell’s smile faded. She shifted in her chair, the crackle of the wicker setting the raven to sidestepping along its roost, its talons
click-click
ing against the wooden bar.

“I see. Well, then, it seems I owe you thanks as well.”

I raised my palms heavenward in a gesture implying a lack of understanding.

“For helping Mr. Barnum,” Iell said. “Chinatown.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The package you picked up, Mr. Fortuno. It was for me.”

It took me a moment, but then I saw the connection. Of course. Iell had pressed Barnum, and he’d made me do her bidding so he wouldn’t lose face. My curiosity about the contents of the package was instantly renewed.

But Iell had chilled toward the conversation, and my heart sank. In an effort to renew her interest, I pushed the bouquet of flowers across the table toward her.

She shook her head and smiled.

“I think, Mr. Fortuno, that you had better take these flowers to the one for whom they were intended.”

Iell made no further comment. As she stood, she gave me a half smile of dismissal, and I knew the only honorable action was to allow the women to depart, so I tipped my hat as they walked down the Arboretum path, the mist machine cloaking their backs in a heavy shroud of fog.

I would have been more disappointed had I not, at that moment, observed something on the floor behind the big wicker chair, something white and diaphanous. Iell’s scarf. I whisked it up and held it to my nose; it smelled of roses. “Look how I’ve been favored,” I said, to the silent birds asleep on their perches somewhere behind me. “Your new caretaker is blessed with a token of the lady.” I squeezed the scarf into my coat pocket and rescued the flowers from where they lay. The raven let out a solitary squawk that brought a smile to my face.

I
RETURNED
to my resident hall as the bells from St. Paul’s chimed ten. Although I worried about having offended Iell by offering her Matina’s magnolias, at least this time I’d held up my side of the conversation. I was so distracted I didn’t even notice Matina sitting on a chair outside my door until I was almost upon her.

“Where have you been? I left my shawl in your room, and when I came to get it you were gone.” Matina snapped her fan closed and rapped it lightly on my leg.

“Forgive me,” I stammered, breathless. “I felt like a little walk.”

“What are those?”

The flowers. I still had the flowers. The partially crushed magnolia blossoms released a heady scent, and when I thrust them forward, a few flattened petals drifted to the floor. “A present.” I flushed. “For you. To let you know how much I value our friendship.”

“Oh, you sweet man. Whatever did I do to deserve flowers?” Matina tucked her fan under the lace of her sleeve and held out her arms. I handed her the magnolias and considered telling her about my encounter with Iell and Emma. Emma now knew about my trip to Chinatown and might bring it up at any time. I knew I should confess, but I couldn’t seem to make myself say the words.

“Would you like to go sit on the roof for a while?” Matina asked. “The weather is perfect.”

I opened my door slightly but did not ask her in. “I’m rather peaked. Would you mind if we went some other time?”

“No, of course not,” Matina answered, and as she put out her hand for me to help her to her feet, she smiled brightly. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Barthy.”

“Yes, of course. Tomorrow. Good night, my dear.” I tilted forward to give her a brotherly peck on the cheek, but felt a slight tug and stopped.

“Barthy, whatever is this?” Matina stepped away from me. She had plucked Iell’s scarf from my pocket and now held it in front of her, lifting it to the tip of her nose. Gingerly, she sniffed it. “My, my. How lovely it is.”

Vainly, I tried to halt the river of heat surging up my neck and into my face. “Oh, that. I found it in the hallway. It must belong to someone. First thing in the morning, I plan to give it to Mr. Fish.”

“Hmm.” Matina frowned slightly. She returned the scarf to me, and I averted my eyes, knowing she was waiting for a better explanation.

I coughed but said nothing.

“Well. I’d best return to my rooms. You get a good night’s sleep now, Barthy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hadn’t lied to Matina about anything important. Not really. But I found myself fighting the feeling that I’d done something dreadfully wrong. As I lay in bed, Iell’s scarf on the pillow next to me, I wished I’d been more forthcoming.

A
T HALF PAST ELEVEN THE NEXT EVE
ning, I knocked on Alleys door. His openmouthed stare showed how surprised he was to see me.

“As long as you haven’t moved to Indiana yet, I thought you might go to McNealy’s with me tonight.” I’d already decided against telling Alley about my serendipitous meeting with Iell, not wanting to take the chance that he might mention it to Matina. What I really wanted was his help. I’d not been able to take my mind off Iell since yesterday and simply had to see her again. The only place I knew she would be was performing in her show.

“You want to go out?” Alley asked. “It’s been months since you been out o’ here, Fortuno.”

“All the more reason for a change,” I said, smiling.

I ran a finger around the inside of my collar, pretending nonchalance. Alley knew I wanted something—I could tell by his heavy-lidded stare. But I knew he’d be more likely to help me if properly distracted. And I wasn’t after much, really: just a little help getting into the Yellow Room. If memory served, Fish owed Alley a favor. A few weeks ago the revolving lamp on the Museum roof had come off its hinges and teetered on the edge of the building. Alley had hauled it back in time to prevent it from crashing down into the street and crushing who knew how many passersby.

“I won’t get in one of those fancy buggies,” Alley said, thankfully refraining from asking any further questions. “You know damned well I won’t.”

“No reason we can’t walk. And we can talk about your recent problems if you like,” I added.

“I ain’t got no problems, Fortuno.”

“All right, then, we can always discuss mine.”

Alley wrinkled up his forehead, closed his door, and then opened it moments later with his crushed hat in hand. Together, we headed down the service stairs and out through the Ann Street door.

“Good God, the air smells foul tonight.” I dug into my pocket for my kerchief as we hit the street, sorry already I’d suggested that we step out. Parts of the city still relied on hundred-year-old hollow tree trunks buried in the ground to carry waste to the river, and clearly the system had overflowed again. Raw sewage covered half the walkway.

“Same as always,” Alley answered, slowing his pace so I could keep up.

“How are you getting along with Mr. Fish?” I asked as I chicken-hopped along the filthy Ann Street boardwalk, bands of tension running through my shoulders and up my neck.

“Fine. Fine. Always fine.”

“He’s too strict with the rules, though, don’t you think? Not as bad as Thaddeus, God knows, but still too officious for my liking.”

“Rat!” Alley pounded his heel against the wooden walk, and a rat the size of my head bulleted across our feet toward the relative safety of the open street.

“Honestly, Alley, must you?” I waited for my heart to stop pounding before I went on. “As I was saying, you’d think Fish would be more receptive to us, wouldn’t you? After all, it’s not like he’s talent.”

“I hate rats.”

“In my experience, the only way to get him to budge is to do him a favor.”

Alley stopped under a streetlamp and looked over at me as if hearing me for the first time. “Get who to budge?”

“Fish.”

“Budge what?”

“The rules.”

“Ah.” Alley shook his head yes—though who knew to what?—and off we went with nothing at all accomplished.

We hit Broadway in a matter of minutes, and I held my tongue so we could pass more quickly through the crowd of late-night strollers and streetwalkers slumped beneath the light of the streetlamps. I buttoned my coat against the night air. Both of us kept to the shadows. We made good progress, too, soon reaching the wrought-iron stairs of Loew’s Bridge, the overpass that climbed up and over Broadway.

We picked our way up past discarded newspapers, handbills, and trade cards, a veritable forest of paper flattened out and filthy from hundreds of booted walkers. I was about to bring up Fish again, and how I might get into Iell’s show, when we stumbled across the festering body of a dog lying belly-up halfway across the bridge. Alley slung a piece of broken cobblestone at the carcass, setting rats to scatter in three directions, and I hurried off the bridge so fast I beat Alley down the stairs to the other side.

At least the west side of Broadway was an improvement. There, the store windows sparkled; halfway down the block, the Western Union building towered above us. Higher than every other building in town, it was the city’s timekeeper.

“I love that device,” I said, pointing my chin toward the roof with its giant ball mounted on a cable. Every day, exactly at noon, the ball plunged downward. The entire city set their watches by it: bakers, grand ladies, the fire brigade, and the police; even the harbor ships used it to right their chronometers.

Alley grunted an acknowledgment of sorts, and we stood for a moment looking up. “So whaddaya want from me?” Alley asked.

No reason now to beat around the bush. “Does Fish owe you any favors?”

Alley waited.

“All right. I want to get into the new woman’s show, but I haven’t been able to manage it, so I thought, maybe, if he owed you, you could ask. And if not, maybe a little diversion in the hallway, just long enough to allow me to slip inside the room.”

“I’m sure there’s nothin’ in there worth seein’.”

“It’s driving me mad. I
have
to see her.”

Alley raised an eyebrow and took off walking again, but I knew he’d think about what I’d asked and would help me if he could.

The nearer we got to the river, the gentler the air, and by the time the tavern came into view, the smell of cherry blossoms from the Van de Clyff orchards inspired me to whistle “Saucy Kate.” I’d done what I could for the moment, and I actually found myself enjoying the night air. When we reached our destination, the tension in my shoulders had completely disappeared.

The front of McNealy’s tavern looked calm enough: a hound lying beneath the rangy oak branches that covered the shingled roof, and a man sleeping it off on the south side of the porch. The poor sot groaned as I clambered over his legs, and when he rolled to the side, I recognized the distended forehead and hollow cheeks of John Conklin in the flesh. Only yesterday I’d read a rumor in
The Clipper
that the New American Museum in Philly had dismissed him for getting into an argument over a girl. “Has our Modern Hercules shipwrecked once more against the cliffs of love?” the piece read. “How can the very man who caught balls fired from the mouth of a cannon be so weak as to be downed by the fairer sex?”

“If he keeps going like that”—Alley looked down toward John Conklin—“he’ll end up on that wall.” He tilted his chin toward rows of metal plates, the Plaques for the Dead, that McNealy had hung in honor of famous performers over the years. They covered the wall from the doorframe all the way to the far wall joint, most little more than tarnished tin strips with names etched in the center. James McFarland
(d. 1858),
the equilibrist who performed a free-wire ascension act outside Levi North’s circus tent and died of a stab wound to the jugular in a fight over his wife. The great Hiram Franklin
(d. 1864)
, the batule-board leaper who only this year was declared lost at sea somewhere off the Cape of Good Hope. I still had a clipping from the
Herald
that Matina had slipped across my desk one day.
In case you’re thinking of sailing off,
her note had said. As if I’d ever. And in the far
corner, a plaque for Josip Rigó, my old partner.
AN ASCENT TO HEAVEN
, the plaque read.