Elsinore (25 page)
Authors: Jerome Charyn
Ethan carried his shovel for two days and then decided to give it up. “I don't have to kill you.”
“Do you know where Phippsy's daughter is?”
“Have a radish.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Even if I had a clue, I couldn't tell.”
They lived on their meager diet, with millions buried in the house. The ferryman would appear with the most essential rations. He must have been Hirschele's contact. Because Frog never heard the telephone ring.
He tore up his checkbook. He had no desire to haunt the boutiques of Edgartown. But he kept his uniform clean.
Ethan started to panic. He picked up his shovel again. He wouldn't touch the corn flakes.
“I can't chew. Phippsy's coming to get us. He wants my millions. He'll set fire to all my paper, turn it into fuel.”
“Aladdin's his fuel. The Swisser has a new line of coats.”
“Well, we're sitting ducks. Any fool could rob us.”
And when Al arrived in the middle of the night with two more islanders, carrying empty potato sacks, Holden was there. He sat with Ethan's Webley in his lap.
“Don't try to stop us, pilgrim,” Al said.
Frog shot Al in the foot. The ferryman whimpered. “It isn't fair.” He left with his two comrades and the potato sacks. But Ethan wasn't satisfied.
“It's not safe. You could steal my treasure. You could get ideas.”
“Ethan, I haven't spent a dollar on this island. Go to bed.”
One or twice a week Cardinale would attack him with the shovel. Holden's arms were sore from where the shovel fell. But he was fond of this old, old man. He wouldn't hurt Ethan Cardinale. And he still had the blessings of an open field. Winter birds would caw at him, follow him from field to field, but Holden couldn't seem to find much of a trigger for his own life. He'd been bred like some strange plant to bump people. That was the only trigger he ever had. Kronstadt wasn't a witch. She'd lived between the empty spaces, like Holden himself.
His fabric had been the clothes he wore. The stolen designs of David, Duke of Windsor. He was no less of a mannequin than the twig. Now he had no signature. He was a soldier in a junkyard. He shared nothing with Ethan. They never talked. Frog couldn't even remember his own voice.
And then he heard the roar of a minibus. He could see the word MIMES painted on one of the panels. And he wondered if a troupe had come to perform on Chappy. It was his island now. He was standing in a field. The bus swerved around the toilet bowls and stopped in front of Frog. Mrs. Church got out with little Judith. Judith's face hadn't healed. The mouth was swollen. The bones of her eyes were blue.
“I was never married,” she said. “It was all a lie.”
“Shh,” he told her. “It must hurt to talk.”
“There was no Mr. Vanderwelle. I'm not even a lawyer. I never went to school. I lived with mama in the woods.”
“Shh,” Holden said. He wanted to murder Minot all over again. But Frog had worn Minot's pajamas. He was living in Minot's house. He couldn't even tell the good assassins from the bad.
“I told Mama I wanted to stay ⦠stay with you ⦠Holden's island.”
“Shh,” he said.
Big Judith stared down at Frog from that height of hers, a panther without a party dress. She could have swallowed Holden. He was helpless around her, like he'd been with Mrs. Howard. Frog couldn't negotiate with very tall women.
“Holden, I'm lending my daughter to you.”
“I'm sick of lendings. I want her to be my wife.”
“You're a married man, Mr. Frog.”
“Means nothing. I'll get a divorce ⦠Does Howard know you brought her here?”
“He'll get used to it. Give him time. But for God's sake, shut up about marriage. I don't want him to have a stroke.”
She kissed her daughter and climbed into the bus. Holden watched her bump across the icy fields. She seemed one more piece of ice in an eternity of ice.
He took little Judith's hand. He led her to the orange house. Marcus Reims, he muttered. He'd have to bump Ethan. He couldn't keep her around a crazy man. He was shivering. He could see some shadow fly in the window. I'll kill him, Frog said, if he's holding a shovel.
Frog opened the door. Ethan had his shovel. He saw Judith. “The little daughter,” he said. His face seemed to flush like a curious rose. He dropped the shovel. “Would you care for some corn flakes?”
Ah, Holden said, I won't have to kill him now.
23
She drove toward the lights of Manhattan in the Mimes' very own bus, like some mechanic behind the wheel. Judith didn't own a license. She'd learned to drive at that madhouse in Vermont. Elsinore, Elsinore, where doctors in blue gowns sat with her while she bumped across the grounds, the madwoman who belonged to Mr. Phipps. Steering that wheel was like discovering another language. Almost as good as sex.
Judith's first car was an old Cadillac in the woods that also served as Elsinore's ambulance. She remembered all the turns as she went round and round the porches and kept seeing the same metal rooster that must have been a weathercock. The rooster made winter noises, like the cackle of ice.
She returned to Manhattan, parked the bus, showered at her loft, shaved her legs, searched through her closets. Judith dressed to kill. A sixty-seven-year-old moll, having to seduce Howard one more time. It wasn't even noon. She smoked a cigarette, rinsed her mouth with a shot of rye. “The Supper Club,” she said. “The Supper Club.”
She put on her coat with the rabbit-skin collar, caught a gypsy cab, and arrived at the foundation like a lonesome mama. Howard's doormen pampered her. “Hello, Mrs. Church.” She had her own bodyguard to take her upstairs. She handed the bodyguard her rabbit-skin coat and walked into the restaurant with a pair of naked shoulders.
Howard was at his table. He couldn't take his eyes off Judith. His mouth was shivering. He was like an ancient boy tucked inside a green sweater. “I thought you'd abandoned me. I thought you wouldn't come.”
“Didn't I promise you?” she said.
“I thought you wouldn't come.”
And Judith stared into the heart of that crazy restaurant, and it was like a jungle that had no end. Her whole life had been defined by the contours of this room, the murals, the ceilings, the walls, the waiters who stood like tin men, the musicians in white pants, hugging their golden horns.
“Come on,” she said. “Let's dance.”
His face froze against the murals. “I'm a cripple,” he said. “I have to wear special shoes.”
“You always danced. Even when you were half dead.”
He got up from the table, wearing his napkin, and fell into Judith's arms. The orchestra started to wail. It was some lost tune from that time when Howard had his own Cinderella. Judith Church, the dark-eyed belle who danced her days and nights at a palace with polished floors, where the entire population could see down her back.
Howard danced in his heavy shoes. He didn't even have the courage to look at her. His trombones were playing “White Cliffs of Dover.” Her one romance had happened in the middle of the war, when all the windows were covered with blackout curtains. She'd met him in this very room, the shy millionaire who doubled his fortune every single month by trading with pirates and all the Axis powers.
“Where's my little girl?”
“She's not your girl. I raised her.”
“Where is she?”
“With the Frog.”
He started to groan.
“Stop that,” she said. “You knew where I was taking her. That was part of the deal.”
“He's a bumper.”
“And what are you?”
“A philanthropist.”
She laughed, and he couldn't keep up with her moves on the floor. “I don't go around socking people in the head.”
“You do much worse. You steal their lives and make them suffer. Holden puts them out of their misery.”
“Go ahead. Congratulate Sid. Is he living at Aladdin?”
“Stop it, Howard. You know where he is.”
“On the island? On Chappy? With that maniac, Ethan Cardinale? Ethan killed Kronstadt, for Christ's sake.”
“You killed her, old man.”
He was blubbering now, under the mad pull of the horns. Judith could have jumped out the window.
“I didn't strangle Kronstadt.”
“Yes you did. Ethan was only your twin. Didn't you tell me that?”
He stopped dancing. And the orchestra stopped. They could have been at Versailles, or some other house of kings ⦠and little queens like Marie Antoinette. He danced. He stopped. And the music was like a telegraph machine.
“He's your twin.”
“He's a fucking miser and a maniac. He'd have eaten his own mama for a dollar bill. But I won't bother Ethan and the Frog if you stay with me.”
“I promised, old man. Didn't I promise?”
“I want it in writing,” Howard said, truculent and sad.
“Your lawyer or mine?”
“No lawyers.”
“Then what would you like?”
“A note,” he said.
“Right now? While we're dancing?”
“After the dance. I'm not so particular. You'll have to swear on your life that you'll live with me.”
“Howard, I'll haunt you worse than Kronstadt ever did. Kronstadt will feel like afternoon tea.”
“It don't matter ⦠long as you're mine.”
“I'll make you dance morning, noon, and night.”
“It don't matter. I have the orchestra. I have the men ⦠but I gotta know. When is my daughter coming to stay with us?”
“She's not coming. She has the Frog.”
“Jesus, his dad was my chauffeur.”
“And Frog is president of Aladdin. That's America, old man.”
She led Howard over the floor, his shoes like an anchor that kept her from flying into some glass. She'd been suicidal since she was ten. Was she born with that need to hurt herself? Is that what Howard adored? Suicide in the way she danced.
“Sid can't have her,” he said.
Judith stopped dancing. The trombones were caught in the middle of a cry. The waiters hovered close, in case Howard happened to fall.
“I'll leave you, old man. This is the last dance we'll ever have.”
“I'll cut you off without a cent.”
“I'm glad. I'll go to Chappaquiddick. I'll sponge off Ethan. I'll live with Ethan Cardinale.”
“Ethan? I'll break his neck. You can't win.” Then he started to wail. “Dance with me, Judith. I'm getting cold.”
His whole body was shaking, and she gathered up Howard in her arms, like a bag of bones dressed in green. She'd devoted half a century to this old man.
“I won't have Sid as my son-in-law.”
“Yes you will.”
And they went round and round the floor. She could almost see a rooster in the chandeliers. The horns crowed at her. It felt like midnight. She was dancing with Howard Phipps.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Jerome Charyn
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4532-5157-7
This edition published in 2012 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
