The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (25 page)

The parlor was awash with sunlight and didn’t even resemble the same room from the night before. I dragged the chamber pot to the front door and pushed it into the hall with my foot, then brought in the water pitcher left by the morning maids. I had a sudden frightening thought. Would Matina want me to marry her? But no, she’d said we would join together only the one time.

“Good morning.” Matina stood in my bedroom door buttoning her undergown. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

All I could do was stare.

“Cat got your tongue?” Matina gave me a sweet smile, which sent a wave of shame flushing through me. “Well, come along then.” She nodded, and I followed her dutifully into the bedroom, where I stood mute as she pulled her petticoats up off the floor. “It’s late and I have to hurry.” She struggled into her dress, and I fumbled as I closed her buttons. Without looking at me, she stepped away and bundled up her corset and stockings.

“No need to go so soon,” I said, forcing myself to speak. She’d opened the bedroom shutters halfway, and the early sun at her back haloed her great body in gold.

“If I don’t get to my own rooms before the maids do, who knows what they’ll say,” she said lightly. “Can you imagine the gossip Emma would spread if she found I hadn’t slept in my bed?” Matina uncovered the mirror and stood in front of it, twisting herself this way and that. Clucking her tongue, she patted down an errant ruffle and pulled her stomach in tight. “You look absolutely peaked this morning, Barthy. I don’t want you to fret over this. Last night was a wonderful gift for both of us, and not something I will easily forget.”

“Lovely,” I stammered.

“But sometimes,” she went on, trying to hide her disappointment at my response, “gifts turn bad. I don’t want that to happen with us, so let’s leave everything be. Don’t you agree that would be best?”

Even though I so much wanted to say something kind, something true, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I loved her.

Matina waited until it was obvious that I was not going to respond.

“Well, then. I guess that’s agreement enough. We shall continue as we always have. You will, I hope, take me to church service on Sunday as usual?”

“Of course, my dear, of course.”

I bent to kiss Matina’s hand and caught a quick flash of myself
in the mirror. Who in heaven’s name was that person staring back at me?

T
HE MOMENT
the door closed behind Matina, I let out a huge breath, ran to my étagère, and yanked open the drawer. Where had I hidden that root last night? Groping, I shoved aside Iell’s package and reached for the bag with the root in it. I had to rid myself of the damned thing and do it now. Throw it into the chamber pot, that’s what I’d do. Like to see someone save it from that. But at the last moment, I hesitated. Who knew what would become of it if I tossed it aside. What if someone fished the thing out and reported what they’d found to Barnum? Better, I decided, to keep the thing with me until I could dispose of it properly. In the meantime, it would serve as a reminder of my shameful loss of control.

The bag with the root in it stayed in my pocket the entire day. In the evening, after feeding the birds, I set it on the café table in the Arboretum and relived my night with Matina one more time. Gritting my teeth, I took the root to the rock garden and used my bare hands to dig a hole at the base of the jojoba tree. I buried it, bag and all, piling dirt over the thing, and then covering it for good measure with a brick, a handful of gravel and a large speckled rock. Never, never would I lose control like that again!

I
NTIMACY CHANGES EVERYTHING
. E
VEN A MAN
with as little experience as I have knows this. Friendship takes forever to build and can collapse in a moment. My heart sank when Matina walked into the Green Room later that morning wearing a red dress and a frozen smile. Although she joined me at the Notice Board as Fish posted the weekly notices, she faced into the room, away from me. There was a wedge between us now. We were a thousand miles apart.

Fish pounded his cane on the Green Room floor to get the attention of the performers, most still in partial makeup or half dressed for the stage. I tried desperately to focus, but all I could think was, What kind of fool have I been to believe Matina’s assurances that everything will be all right?

“Mr. Barnum has asked me to speak to you about the recent fire,” Fish said. “As you know, this blaze was set in the public hallway outside the kitchens, and management is quite concerned.”

Matina coughed, and I moved closer to her.

Fish cleared his throat. “Precautions must be taken. First, no one will smoke in the public rooms.” A groan went up, and Fish held up his hand. “This restriction applies to nighttime only. If you wish to smoke during the day, that’s fine, but please dispose of smoking materials with extra caution.

“Second, pails of water have been placed under every staircase and empty corner in this Museum. Heaven forbid the need should arise again, but if you discover a fire, douse away as you call for help.

“Finally, we plan to install a fire gong in the service stairway. If you see anything suspicious or smell smoke, bang the hell out of it.”

Alley walked in during questions and, surprisingly, sat down next to Bridgett. Matina scowled.

“Will you excuse me, Barthy?” Matina patted my arm.

“Are you all right?” I asked, though what I really wanted to know was whether we—together—were all right.

“There’s something I must discuss with Alley.” As Matina pushed across the room, I wrapped my arms across my chest and tried to squeeze myself back together.

“Now, on quite another note,” Fish continued, pointing to the weekly schedule. “This Wednesday, Mr. Barnum has planned a Day of Remembrance for those fallen in the war.”

“On Wednesday, at four o’clock,” Fish instructed, stuffing a newly penned script into each person’s hand, “you will find special costumes in the Green Room. Since the set for the Van Winkle play is going up in the Lecture Room, you’re to dress and report directly to the first-floor exhibit hall at fifteen minutes past. Is that understood? We’re using a temporary stage and will be doing a Civil War reenactment, Mr. Barnum’s gift to the veterans of this fine land of ours.”

Everyone leafed through the script, and hands shot up with questions and complaints, but I was too distracted to pay the answers much mind. For the first time, my colleagues seemed like potential enemies. Emma and Ricardo stared at me from the other side of the room. They probably knew about my recent visit to the Chinaman and were plotting about how to use the information. Matina was whispering to Alley about God only knew what, and I prayed it had nothing to do with our night together. Did anyone suspect what had happened last night? I blushed with shame to see that even Zippy’s nurse looked over at me disapprovingly. Undoubtedly, everyone already suspected I’d had a liaison with Matina. One look at her expression and their suspicions would be confirmed. I thought of Iell’s package in the bottom drawer of my étagère. How was I ever going to slip away with everyone watching me?

The moment Fish had his back turned I yanked my costume off its hook. I had to get out of there, even if it meant passing Matina and Alley to get out the door. I decided to buck up. Why not take Matina at her word that everything would go on as it always had? I tipped my hat jauntily to the two of them and kept my scowl hidden until I reached the anonymity of the hall.

F
OR THE
next two days, I put aside my worries as best I could. No one called me to account for my whereabouts, and no itinerant actor showed up at my door with suitcase in hand. Iell’s package lay tucked away in my rooms. I’d heard nothing from her about delivery, so I put that worry out of my mind for the moment.

The problem was Matina. She continued acting strangely, clearly straining for normalcy every time she saw me. We sat in our shared tableau and chatted about nothing, but for three days in a row she came to her meals a half hour late. I made a concerted effort to stay out of her way, eating early and leaving before she arrived, and I waited in my performance room for my shows to begin instead of in the Green Room. But on the afternoon of Barnum’s Memorial show, we found ourselves thrown together again. The Curiosities were all jammed uncomfortably behind a strung-up curtain at the north end of the exhibit hall, a makeshift stage designated by magenta cords. Everyone wore renditions of war outfits. Mine was a ragged Yankee uniform reeking of someone else’s sweat. Only Matina, whose flag-inspired gown was already the bill of the day, got to wear her normal costume.

Because Matina was standing, I dragged over a chair and offered her a seat with a gallant wave of the hand, which she accepted with a chilly nod. “No special costume for you then?” I said.

“Fish seems to like my costume fine the way it is. Thank you for the chair.” I could see her struggle to find something more to say.

“Would you like to join me for tea this evening?” I asked.

Matina shook her head no, but despite her lukewarm response, something in the slope of her shoulders gave me hope that she would soon forgive me. Knowing better than to press further, I kept my peace and moved toward Fish, who was busy inspecting the performers, tucking in a gray shirttail here, a bit of red pantaloon there. After getting the nod for my costume, I moved to the wall to wait for my entrance and nearly tripped over Ricardo, who was crouching in the shadows.

“Good God, man, you nearly knocked me down.”

Ricardo, dressed only in his long johns, popped up and eyed me suspiciously, his expression uncharacteristically contented. Cupped in his hand was a scrawny calico kitten.

“Look what I just found!” Ricardo pinched the animal gently on the scruff of its neck and gave it a loving shake. “A cat. A little baby cat.”

From out front, I could hear the applause. “You better get dressed before Fish sees you,” I said.

“I was comin’ through the garden, and there it was, all by itself. Ain’t it the cutest?”

“Ricardo!” Fish yelled from a few feet away. “Where is your costume? Get moving, lad. We haven’t got all day.” As Fish bore down on us, Ricardo threw him a salute with one hand and reached around me with the other, slipping the kitten into the pocket of my uniform. If I hadn’t seen that fleeting look on his face—what a shock to discover the boy in Ricardo, and a sweet lad at that—I would not have allowed it, but I slid my hand into my pocket and stilled the tiny mews until sounds of the growing audience made Fish move on.

Ricardo snatched the kitten from my pocket and started looking about for another hiding place. “I’m going to call it Poke,” he said over his shoulder.

I motioned toward a small discarded costume basket. When Ricardo smiled at me as if we were now friends, I put him right.

“Don’t think I won’t tell Fish you have a cat if he asks. We have house rules for a reason, you know.”

But Ricardo kept the smile on his face, placing the kitten ever so gently in the basket. “There’s something changed about you lately, Fortuno. Maybe you ain’t so bad.”

The “enactment” turned out to be such a cheap event that even Thaddeus Brown seemed embarrassed by the drivel he had to recite. The crowd was rowdy, and many had brought their own food. We opened with the Juggling Hudsons in spangled tunics, hurling dozens of flags, Confederate and Union, up into the air while a band of pipers toodled out songs in accompaniment. Then Thaddeus dribbled out a tale of the “splitting” of the North and the South, while Ricardo, performing in body tights painted like a Confederate uniform on one side and a Yankee uniform on the other, stretched himself across the stage. Then we moved on to a sad little scene with Emma that Thaddeus called Saving the Innocent. I stood in the
wings watching Emma lumber out dressed like a Southern damsel, her horsy voice booming out over Alley’s head, “Ah’m really a Yankee. Don’t hurt little ol’ me. Save me!” as Alley pretended to try to untie the ropes that bound her.