Carter Beats the Devil (62 page)

“If we were opening in three weeks, we’d be just about ready by then. Shellac, it’s still drying. There’s paint I’ve got boys fanning so it’s tacky at least. It’s a mess.” Ledocq coughed at length, until Carter asked if he were all right. “
Ma sacré toux,
” he whispered. “Sand-soda-lime, the whole thing is murder on my throat—”

Carter held up a hand. Philo was approaching, shoulders slumped, hands in pockets. Carter touched him on the shoulder. “Good afternoon, Philo.”

“Hello.”

“How is Pem?”

“She’s fully recovered,” he said blankly, as he’d been saying for weeks. “I’d like to go back to her, but she keeps telling me to stay.”

“She’s a good woman,” Carter said.

“She is.” Philo looked up. “James told me . . . the plans were destroyed.” Lately, his sentences bowed in the middle, as if their weight were unbearable. Whenever they talked, Carter wanted both to look away, and to tell him everything would be all right.

“It’s a setback, to be sure. But not all is lost. I’ve been thinking—we have all the equipment except the flat-end tube. We’re close, aren’t we?”

Philo’s eyes were on the andirons. “Close, and far.”

“You know how to make it,” Carter murmured.

Ledocq said, “I think the boy is tired.”

“You know, I do the impossible every night when I’m working.” Carter tried by force of will to make Philo meet his eye. But Philo was rooted on the andiron, which he touched gently with the tip of his shoe. “It’s not too late to help,” Carter said. “I’d love it if my show inspired you to do something impossible.”

Now Philo looked up. It was a face hauntingly familiar to Carter: a polite smile, a mask that didn’t quite cover the mouth of a black chasm. “I used to know how to do that.”

“You can still—”

But Philo had already looked back down, where his foot was kicking against the fireplace bricks. “I understand, Mr. Carter. You and Mr. Ledocq have been very kind. I can’t produce what you’d like me to. I’m sorry.” Carter followed Philo’s gaze—his foot dragged back and forth in a senseless pattern that Carter recognized. Like whittling sticks after Sarah had died. Philo was in a place that admitted no light.

Ledocq opened his mouth to speak, but Carter, with a single shake of his head, stopped him.

Carter said, “It’s okay, Philo.” And he and Ledocq left Philo alone.

When they were out of earshot, Carter said, “I wish I could tell him that in the long run everything will be all right.”

“Why don’t you tell
me
that, instead,” Ledocq whispered.

. . .

A few minutes later, James made a little speech welcoming everyone. With company to attend to, he stood taller than before, pouring wine or lemonade with vigor. “This is the evening of inventors,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty to talk about.”

“
I
have something for them to talk about.” Tom stood in the living room. He waved a pamphlet in the air.

“Not that,” James sighed.

Tom shot him a look that told his partner “I cannot be contained” and took advantage of a pause in conversation to read aloud. “‘Now that you own a Victrola the whole world of music is open to you.
Everything
is yours from the magnificent pageantry of the grand opera to the wild swing of the jazz band—these come to you in your own home.’” He paused. The entire room (save James, fuming) was adrift. “We bought a Victrola last week,” Tom announced. “I took it out of the box, it’s in a thousand pieces, and I have instructions—”

At this, Ledocq began to chuckle.

Tom continued, “I can’t make heads or tails of how you put this junk together, so I was telling James as we have the greatest mechanical minds in the world here, wouldn’t it be fun if everyone—”

“Give me that,” Ledocq whispered. “Max, you help me. Philo, you don’t have to if you don’t want.”

Without inflection, Philo said, “I can help,” leaving his post at the fireplace.

Mrs. Ledocq blew between pursed lips. “I don’t know, you invite a man with a sore throat to dinner, and you make him do chores?”

While Philo read the instructions aloud (“Unfasten the taper tube by removing the brace from the end of the sound box crook”), Ledocq and
Max sorted through the parts to determine what on earth a taper tube might be. Carter wondered if he might be of use in the kitchen.

But in the kitchen, Carter was told in no uncertain terms to go away. He reached to uncover a serving tray, and James slapped the back of his hand with a wooden spoon. “Those are baked potatoes with cheese on them, and they aren’t for you, they’re for Baby.” When Carter protested that he wanted to help with dinner, James added that over the years he’d broken his weight in dishes, so he was invited to make himself useful by answering the doorbell whenever it rang. So Carter left, spirits oddly raised; at least James had returned to abusing him.

He stood at the edge of the living quarters, watching the knot of inventors contend with Mrs. Ledocq, who had yanked the instructions away and, with amiable authority, was telling them what to do.

Carter heard Philo say, “Hey, gents, she’s right—that
is
the taper tube.”

“It is fun,” she nodded. “I never get to do this at home. He always closes the door.” She said, “Now, ‘After proper pivot setting has been secured, tighten the set screw.’ Lefty loosey, righty tighty, you know.”

Carter smiled and sipped his wine. He checked his watch and saw there were still hours until he needed to be at the stage door. He felt torn between participating in the social discourse to come and an almost grotesque impatience to close the doors, turn out the lights behind his eyes, and get the show started. The doorbell rang, giving him something to do. He threw the door open, readying a polite quip.

On the other side was Phoebe.

“Hello?”

“Hello!” He almost shouted it with joy.

“Oh,
hello,
” she cried in recognition, putting out a hand, which he took and more or less used to yank her across the threshold. She was a delightful study in contrasting simplicity and dash: though her face had been but lightly powdered, and she’d gone sans rouge, she also wore Angelus lipstick—“shockingly scarlet”—and her hair had been very much
done,
straightened and held in place with chopsticks. She wore a beaded black silk dress that left an elegant amount of her throat bare.

“I’m so glad to see you,” he exclaimed.

“I’m glad someone is.” Her fingers flew across his palm, across his calluses.

She turned her head left and right, showing off from every angle, until Carter said: “You look spectacular.”

“I did all this by myself, and not one girl at the Home noticed, and I wish I could forgive them for that, but—”

“How’d you get here?”

“Magic trick.”

Drying his hands on a towel, James came out of the kitchen. “This must be Phoebe.”

“Are you James?”

James took her in, head to toe, and whistled. “Dear God, but you’re a dish.”

“Thank you,” she laughed.

“Charlie, you never told me she had such kissable lips. They’re outstanding!”

“He leaves out important things,” Phoebe said.

“That smile! The taxi I sent arrived on time, I hope.”

“Shh. I told your brother it was all magic.”

“You are
so kissable.
” James leaned forward and kissed Phoebe on the lips. It seemed to strike her dumb, so he added, “You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve just come back from Paris.”

“That’s a very good line,” Phoebe stammered. Carter laughed, delighted to see Phoebe knocked out by his brother.

“Everybody!” James clapped his hands and addressed the group by the Victrola. “This is Miss Phoebe Kyle, and she is beautiful!”

Phoebe gave a shy little wave in their general direction.

“I’ll fetch you a drink,” James said.

When he left, Phoebe said, “Well, that was interesting.”

“You know, you two remind me of each other.”

“I have things to tell you. Can we go someplace?”

He nodded, and then said “Yes” aloud, adding “but perhaps we should wait until after dinner.”

“Oh dear, you’re being reasonable.”

“It kills me, too.”

“You could show me the view.”

The idea seemed promising. “Yes, I’d like that.”

With her arm linked to his, he walked her across the living quarters and opened the doors to the balcony that wrapped around three sides of the apartment. They were five stories up, so the view was rather magnificent from any position: the silent Sunday downtown skyscrapers behind them, the wilds of Telegraph Hill to the east, and then, extending to the bay, a vista of ramshackle roofs and whitewashed walls and clotheslines and wooden staircases painted green, the homes of North Beach Italian families. Because it was Sunday, the whole neighborhood smelled of oregano sauteing in olive oil, and young men were on every back porch,
collarless, playing cards before dinner. Carter could see them laughing and he could see, behind them, in the gaps between the apartment houses, tendrils of fog reaching across the bay.

Carter glanced back inside the apartment. From their smiles and gestures, he could tell banter was flying between his brother and the Ledocqs. Philo stayed by the half-finished Victrola, and Carter could see him shaking his head, saying something to Tom.

“It feels like fall,” Phoebe said.

“I’ve noticed that quality to the light lately.”

“I used to notice it, too. And I can feel it still.”

“I’ve missed you.”

Her smile
was
terrific. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been working, but I always think about you. I’ve been inspired lately.” He told her a bit about the show. The opening card tricks, how he had a way to pick a card for the entire audience, and as he acted it out, it made her laugh in not quite the right places. She looked nervous to him, and her being nervous made him talk. “I’ll bring more people onstage than usual. I’ll have a child throw knives at me, for instance.” Because she didn’t say anything, he added, “It should be fun.”

“Are any of the tricks dangerous?”

“No, not really,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m confident,” he said.

“Then I guess having knives flung at you by small-fry sounds fine.”

He touched her cheek. He hoped she would lean into it, as he remembered she had a subtle way of feeling his touch, but instead, she just seemed to look straight at him through her black glasses. This made him keep talking. “I’d forgotten how you go about striking people dumb with wonder, but lately I’ve been paying attention to that sort of thing. I have old notebooks,” he said, looking off to the flat meadows atop Telegraph Hill. “For years, my illusions weren’t very good. They were so terrible I didn’t even perform them in front of an audience. They were more like philosophical arguments with God. ‘How awful can things get,’ you know?”

“I have those sorts of talks every day. They’ve been coming out well, lately. I’m well-disposed toward the world when I don’t want to destroy it.”

“That’s exactly the balance,” he said excitedly. “I had this trick, I wouldn’t dignify it as an ‘illusion,’ it was with silk scarves—I would tear up colored silks very creatively, and then at the end, show how they’d been torn even more terribly than you thought. It may be magic, but it wasn’t satisfying for an audience.”

She shook her head. She mouthed a “No.”

Carter continued, “I’d forgotten that a miracle is the type of magic an audience wants. A tragedy with a happy ending.”

Phoebe felt along the railing, hand over hand, until she had inched away from him. “Was all that after your wife died?”

“Of course. Yes.” He paused. “I haven’t told you about her, have I?”

She shook her head.

“But you know about her anyway, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“So, should that strike me as wonderful?”

“It’s not wonderful.”

She looked like she was bracing herself for a punch. When he’d traveled to the Far East, he’d heard the Chinese knew the pressure points you could touch to ease pain, and Carter wished he’d paid more attention. He himself felt a lightness. He was looking at Telegraph Hill, directly behind Phoebe, where on an early morning in the spring of 1911, he had fallen in love with Sarah. Here he was less than a mile and over a decade away. What a strange world to live in. He thought of the boys and girls who looked for sweethearts at Mountain View Cemetery, and chorus girls who met their beaux behind scrim, and office romances that flourished in the buildings on Market Street, and he felt like there were little lights in alcoves here and there across the city, in cozy dens, in doorways during rainstorms, or even a chilly balcony on the Ferry building. Everywhere, little pairs of glowing lights. When you walked a city, wherever you looked, someone had probably fallen in love there.

“However you know about me,” Carter said, “it
is
wonderful.”

“I’m not psychic, Charlie. I’m not a medium or a ghost—” The hair on her arms stood in a sea of gooseflesh. She hugged herself. “I’m not this way, normally,” she declared. “I’m very carefree, and I like your motorcycle and someday I’d like to dance with you.” The network of clips and pins that kept her bun in place was already failing, and her hair was beginning to take its natural course. Carter loved her. It was a feeling he hadn’t expected to return to him, but here it was, a transformation, the dead heart now beating.

He began to say it. “I—”

“I was one of Borax Smith’s girls.” She managed each word with care, like she was testing it for resilience.

At first, it was as if she’d said she was from Kenosha, and Carter was ready to reply, “Oh, yes, I’ve played there, I know it well.” But he realized what she had left unsaid.

“I didn’t think it was fair,” she began, and then, “I thought you should know.”

A thumping sound behind him, fingertips on glass. Carter turned around and saw his brother waving them in for dinner. When he looked back, he saw Phoebe’s mouth was taut, and her hands braced on the railing like she was awaiting an earthquake. In a rush, for she’d been preparing this speech for a while, she said, “I was there when you were sad. You told Borax all of your troubles. I was right there in the room sometimes, or the other girls told me what they’d heard. You made quite an impression on all of us.” Carter tried to remember her, but it was of course impossible—the bonnets, the veils, the silence. “So that’s how I know about you. I liked you back then, and I like you now. I’ve been such a pest at the Home, I’m just being eaten alive with guilt every moment you think I’ve got some kind of gift.”