Femme Fatale (48 page)

The car was crowded, another source of unease, but Quentin secured a post for us near the broad glass window (oh, dear!). Soon we were drawn upward like a bucket of spawning grunion in a well.

I shut my parasol and my eyes.

The top was indeed high, and the view sweeping. The flat sandy plain below was like a game board. The island constructions with their tented turrets sat on it like scattered pieces in some pattern only a chess master could decipher. Or Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know why I thought of him, except that I was sure that
he
would never permit himself to ascend to such a perilous height in such a bizarre place.

However, Quentin stood behind me at the lookout’s fenced edge so I could see all there was not to see. I felt quite safe despite the height and the crowding. His hands on the railing bracketed me into a windblown pocket of protection. The expanse of blue water and the bright sun finally outshone the tawdry carnival constructions. It felt quite amazing to be as high as the birds and look down on people the size of ants.

In fact, Quentin had to tap me on the shoulder to leave, as the platform was deserted and the elevator was waiting for us.

I bustled back in and soon felt my boots on terra firma again, if shifting sands and gritty boardwalk can be considered firm.

“Perhaps some lunch,” Quentin suggested.

That sounded safe enough. I glanced at the gargantuan hotel.

“Not there,” Quentin said. “Too stuffy. Here’s Feltman’s hot dog emporium.”

Hot dog? I indeed hoped not!

This was another wooden wedding cake of a building topped with the ubiquitous cupola, with the name
FELTMANS
in great man-high letters just under it.

We joined the crowds funneling inside, and were soon seated in an airy, lattice-surrounded courtyard with a maple tree as its centerpiece. Japanese lanterns were strung like large fireflies on a high wire above us. The oom-pah-pah of German musicians blended with the noise of passing crowds and shrieks of happy bathers.

“Why . . . this is a Bohemian beer garden!” I exclaimed, gazing around the small tables of men and women being served by an array of waiters.

“So you shall feel at home,” Quentin said with some delight.

No, I should not. I had certainly patronized Bohemian beer cellars with Godfrey a time or two, but purely in the pursuit of our mission, of course. So I imagined that sitting here in daylight with Quentin, not on any mission other than amusement, which I had yet to fulfill, would be respectable enough. Women’s hats dotted the area like butterflies on flowers, and no one appeared to remark on who was with whom.

When Quentin ordered “Milwaukee beer” for us both, I did not demure. I was to do as I liked, I had been told by two persons close to me, and I suddenly decided, sitting there, seeing Quentin’s absurd straw hat on the table and the dappled shade of the tree falling on his earnest features, that what I would most like to do was anything that would make Quentin think that I was having “fun.”

The beer was served in tall glasses with handles on one side, like a transparent stein. It shone golden in the daylight. I sipped it and almost sneezed at the foamy cap tickling my nose. I laughed instead.

Quentin laughed with me. “They poured it too fast, given the press of customers.”

I looked around. “I can’t believe so many people come all this way just to walk and take the sea air.”

“Oh, there’s more to do than that,” he said, “if you are up to it.”

I sipped more beer. Nellie Bly, I had been told, “was up to anything.” Why could I not be?

We ordered food, and I decided to try the hot dog that the restaurant was noted for, although it served a full menu. When this item arrived, I was amazed to find it was merely sausage in bread, a common peasant lunch throughout Germany and Bohemia.

All around me people plucked up this commonplace item and tucked into it as if it were a rare and hearty treat.

“No tableware?” I asked.

“None’s available in the desert,” Quentin said, lifting his bulky sandwich and biting.

I nibbled a bit off, glad for my caution, for the hot meat had been slathered in spicy, messy mustard. Of course mustard is an English staple, and I must say it did much to elevate the humble sausage and bread into a tastier affair, although I found it dry and had to alternate dainty bites with sips of Milwaukee beer.

“What does Milwaukee mean?” I asked Quentin when the first flush of hunger had ebbed.

“It’s an Indian name adapted by a city in mid-America, the northern part.”

“There’s certainly a lot of America,” I complained.

“Indeed. The state of Wisconsin in which Milwaukee is found is probably as large as England, and is only one of forty-one American states thus far. I doubt they’re finished. It’s rumored that North and South Dakota, near Wisconsin, and Montana farther west, and even Washington on the Pacific coast, will be added this year.”

“Only forty-one thus far!”

“The Americans are always adding on, like grand hotels.”

“We can’t do that; we’re surrounded by sea.”

“The Americans are surrounded by sea, and by unclaimed or
insufficiently claimed land mass. Their house permits many expansions.”

“How do you know these things?”

“The world is my business. Yes, I’ve concentrated on, and love, the East best, but I can deal with the West if I have to.”

“England is only a tiny isle! That’s why we have a far-flung empire,” I realized.

“Thanks to our sea power in days of yore,” he said, “but those days passed with Nelson. We may not have an empire much longer.”

“Then what will you do?”

He sat back to consider the question, to consider me. “I don’t know. What do you think I might do?”

“I have no idea. I don’t think you will . . . sell hot dogs.”

He laughed and waved the waiter over, indicating our empty glasses. “Would you care for dessert?”

“I don’t know. Do they serve baked Alaska here?”

He blinked and drew away as if singed. “Touché. I suggest a cooling ice cream for Mademoiselle,” he turned to tell the waiter, and me indirectly. He regarded me again, a bit more gingerly. “Do you mind my ordering for you?”

“Not when it is something I would like.”

“
Hmmm
. We can make an appointment to have baked Alaska at Delmonico’s, which is the originator and only server of the delicacy in the world, so far.”

“Did
she
have it?” I sipped the new glass tankard of Milwaukee beer the waiter had placed before me, thinking of my Paris acquaintances, Buffalo Bill. And Red Tomahawk.

“No, only I. She had the tutti frutti. And my baked Alaska melted, because I had other urgent matters to attend to, so I didn’t really get to it in the peak condition.”

“Oh. Melted. How unfortunate.”

“So we could have it, together, at Delmonico’s, before you leave, if you like.”

“I am supposed to do what I like. That sounds like something I would like.”

“I will ask Irene if she can spare another day or two on these shores when we return.”

“When do we return?” I asked casually. The day was pleasantly warm under the tree and the beer had lost its bitter, stinging taste and was quite . . . bracing and effervescent, like seltzer lemonade.

He smiled. “When you like.”

So we chatted, and invented ludicrous professions for him. My lime ice cream arrived and was completely refreshing. I finished my second beer and suddenly confronted the price of my carelessness.

“I don’t suppose,” I finally was forced to lean inward and whisper to Quentin, “that Coney Island has . . .”

He leaned inward to hear me. “Has what, Nell?”

“Has . . . you know.”

He did not know.

“Comfort stations,” I finally mumbled.

“Dozens and dozens.”

“It does! How very American of it,” I sighed in relief. “Where?”

“Here. All along the beach. There are bathhouses, too, where people change into bathing costumes.”

“I don’t want one of
those
!” I then excused myself, left my parasol on the table under Quentin’s guard, and found a respectable-looking woman, who directed me where needed.

The whole process was amazingly easy and even unembarrassing, perhaps aided by the strangely pleasant mood in which I felt myself, in which it seemed I could make no misstep or say anything the slightest bit wrong, and in which I need not trouble myself about all of the things I usually did.

Perhaps this salutary condition was a result of being in such safe hands as Quentin’s. After all, a man who had fended off foreign
and domestic spies in the wilds of Afghanistan could certainly handle any rowdy crowds on Coney Island.

Once I returned to the table, I tried to don my kid gloves again, but they were annoyingly tighter than usual and Quentin put them in his pocket. I did pick up my parasol and we ambled into the bright afternoon, he drawing my arm through his, which was quite proper because people were doing it all over the beach.

The beach. Oh, my. I couldn’t help seeing a good deal of men’s bare arms and lower limbs and women’s too! Their bathing costumes were tight woolen affairs much resembling underclothing, and I managed to mostly look away.

Besides, Quentin was guiding me inland, to . . . the elephant hotel!

“There is horse racing at the island’s other end,” he told me, “but the people are rougher there, I thought you’d enjoy the sights here.”

“Of course. And the elephant is an eastern creature, isn’t it? Perhaps you could become an elephant trainer.”

“Sometimes I feel like one,” he remarked wryly. “The government moves as ponderously as an elephant and its ears seldom hear where the feet are trampling.”

We ambled around the front of the building. It was shaped like a huge standing elephant with a skin of tin, the howdah on its back as high as the spire on the cupola of the sprawling hotel to its left.

“It must be twelve stories,” I estimated.

In its massive front feet sat shops, a cigar emporium on one side, a diorama in the other.

“Do you care for a cigar?” I asked Quentin, feeling he was entitled to some souvenir of the day, no matter how disgusting.

“Do you care for a cigar?”

“No! Irene would.”

“Shall we buy her one?”

“No! Yes! She will be so shocked.”

Of course Quentin bought it and tucked it inside his breast pocket. Poor man, he was becoming a human elephant, my gloves in his pocket, Irene’s cigar in his jacket. I giggled at the sheer absurdity of it.

The elephant’s other leg hosted a diorama of the island. I gasped with delight when I saw it, and we immediately paid a dime each to go inside. Even though the leg’s circumference was sixty feet, as the brochure boasted, the diorama was sadly lacking the artistry of the Paris panorama buildings, which I told Quentin as soon as we left.

“America is new at these things,” he answered. “Give them time.”

Then we climbed the spiral staircase in the elephant’s rear leg to regard the few hotel rooms the edifice offered and a gift shop, where he bought me a chiffon scarf with a drawing of the elephant on it. Then it was onward and upward, until we stood looking out of the elephant’s eyes on the panorama below.

“I never dreamed I’d ever be inside an elephant,” I declared.

“Neither did I. Come, there’s more to do.”

“More?”

Quentin next escorted me to a railroad station!

“We’re leaving, then,” I said, surprised by the unintended disappointment in my tone. “You said there was more to do.”

“This train doesn’t go anywhere,” he said, smiling mysteriously as he bought the tickets at ten cents apiece.

I suddenly realized that I felt like a child again, who needn’t worry about what things cost, or who would take care of her or . . . anything at all. Although, as a child, I had never been to such a place as Coney Island. Was this having fun? Perhaps.

But this was a very strange railroad. The cars were open, on wooden tracks like mine trams, and we sat two abreast. As soon as we were seated I saw that we were poised at the top of long grade downward. The sign read “Switchback Railroad.”

“Quentin—”

“It’s an amusement ride.”

“That grade doesn’t look amusing in the slightest.”

I remembered the deep alpine valleys I had traversed alone by train to reach Irene in Prague once. How my fingernails had cut welts into my palms with the tension! I had never told anyone.

I remembered, also, how Quentin and I had returned from Prague more recently by train, and as well as we got along during that enforced sequestering then, we were on entirely different footing now, with more wariness between us, and deeper feelings as well. Perhaps the first was because of the second.

He grinned at my serious face. “It’s supposed to be fun.”

“Many things that are supposed to be fun are simply dangerous,” I began to answer in my governess guise, but the odd “train” pulled away from the boarding area right then and we shot down at a fearsome pace, down, down, until the tracks rose up like a mountain and we raced up the grade until momentum stopped us. There we were handed out to wait while the attendants pushed the cars to a higher point on a second track.

We boarded again—there was no other way to get back! Quentin took my hand in his, and squeezed.

Away we went, down again in a great swoop and up until the speed of that plunge again petered out.

We finally stood on our own two feet again, watching the line of eager riders shuffle forward to the sacrifice!

“That beats a gallop on an Arab stallion,” Quentin pronounced.

I wouldn’t know about that, but I did know that he, at least, was having fun.

“Are you game for the Ferris wheel?” he asked next.

I looked at where he gazed: a vast version of the steamship’s side wheel looming against the sky, swinging cars resembling charms on some giant’s bracelets, and poor benighted people sitting in them.

“Ferris wheel? That?”

“It’s the biggest I’ve seen.”

I was not reassured, but I hadn’t the heart to tell him so.

Nellie Bly in a madhouse? Nell Huxleigh on a maddening Catherine wheel in the sky? Didn’t they torture dead Roman Catholic saints, usually women, virgins and martyrs, on just such appliances?