The Swan Gondola (29 page)

Now, for a nickel, you could be right in the thick of it. You could suck alfalfa smoke from a pipe—a penny a puff—while sitting alongside a man claiming to be an Indian chief. Everything cost you, even just a plug of that buffalo pemmican you could barely chew without ripping out a tooth. You could place bets on which man would catch the maiden in a love chase on horseback and get tickets to glimpse a baby that had been born in a tepee a few days before—Little Spotted Bear swaddled in a pelt. But the biggest spectacles were the sham battles staged in the open fields, stealing some business away from the Wild West Show. Rumors floated through the Fair that virgins had been abducted and businessmen scalped, right there, within the Fair's fences, only steps away from the New White City. These rumors were designed by the tribesmen themselves. All the threat and naked skin drew folks closer and closer.

In August's tent, I lay back on the rug next to the center pole that kept the roof up. The roof was nothing but a threadbare bedsheet patterned with stars, thin enough to let some light in. August stood nearby looking into a gilt-framed mirror he'd hung on one of the tent posts, twisting his hair up into a little bun and locking it into place with a thin-handled spoon. On his ankle was a stringy bracelet, and I touched its charms—a silver dove and a heart.

“It's a mourning bracelet,” August said, lifting the hem of his petticoat an inch or two higher, moving his ankle around to show it off. “That's what I tell people, anyway. ‘They're strands of my dead lover's hair,' I tell people. ‘The bracelet helps me see what's not there to be seen.' But it's just hair out of my own head.” He lowered himself to the rug to sit cross-legged. “Do you want me to tell
your
fortune?” he said.

“I don't have a fortune,” I said. I sat up too, cross-legged, facing him. Our knees touched. “All I have is
mis
fortune.”

“Well, yes,” he said, taking my hands in his, palm to palm, “misfortune
is
your fortune.” He closed his eyes tight and furrowed his brow, as if studying the ether. “It's all I see for you.”

“Try to see something else,” I said. “I don't want any more bad news.” I looked down at our hands and I laced my fingers in among his. He rubbed softly my thumbs with his thumbs.

“You're such a broken little sparrow, aren't you?” he said. He nearly whispered it. “How'd you ever survive the kind of life you lived?” He leaned forward to kiss my forehead. He then moved his head to press his cheek against my cheek. I put my head on his shoulder.

“If you look in my future,” I said, “see me there with Cecily, please. And with Doxie.”

August shrugged my head away, and he leaned back. “I've learned that
I've
lived other lives,” he said. His hair had fallen loose already from its knot, and a lock of it dangled in his face. I reached up to push it back, tucking the strands behind his ear.

“How do you know?” I said.

“There's a woman here in the camp, and she told me,” he said. “We sat under the moon and drank some sort of wicked brew. When we got drunk enough, we ate a locust, and that's when we saw this flurry of images. I've been stitching it all together in the days since.”

“Who were you before?” I said.

“One hundred years ago, I was one of the wives of a warrior,” he said. “I was a wife, but I was also exactly who I am now. I was a man, and I was a wife. Like a double life, like you might have in a dream. And a French fur trader fell in love with me, and he stole me away from the warrior. We lived in a plantation house in New Orleans, and he bought me beautiful dresses and beautiful wigs. He taught me French, and I wrote a journal of my captivity. In my vision, I could see myself as I was then, and I could see over my shoulder, see what I was writing. But I couldn't read it, because I don't know French now.”

“You only believe in all that voodoo because you want to believe in it,” I said. “You're too romantic.”

“I am,” he said in a whisper, looking in my eyes. “It's a curse I've been carrying around for centuries.”

“Then you know the pain,” I said. I touched my fingers to his wrist, to feel the feather-soft beating of his pulse. His pulse quickened. “Did she ever even love me, do you think?” I said. “Does she love me still? Is she thinking about me?” In that moment, I would trust his every word. I just needed him to say it, to tell me that Cecily loved me, so I could believe him. It was childish, I suppose, but something about being there with him, snug in his sympathy, made me pitiful. I wanted to rest my head on his chest and listen to his heart.

But August stood, turned away, and walked to the wall of the tent. He took deep and broken breaths, his hands on his hips, looking down at the ground.

“August?” I said. “What's wrong?” August said nothing. He didn't move except to breathe. “Augie?” I said.

August ran his fingers over his cheek, smearing his paint. He then took a lace handkerchief from where he'd tucked it into the waist of his petticoat. He dabbed at his nose. “You will see her again,” he said, with a sniffle.

I stood and walked to August's side. “What is it?” I said.

“It was only a glimpse, and a blur at that,” he said. “It was mostly nothing more than a shiver up my spine. But I'm certain. You'll be with her. I see her hovering against a wall, up above your head. Like a picture in a magic lantern.” I looked back and up, following the line of his sight. “Will you go now?” he said. “I need to collect myself.”

If it hadn't gotten so late, the play about to open, I would've begged for more. I wasn't typically inclined to believe in any kind of soothsaying, but I could have spent hours analyzing his visions of Cecily, his voice gentle in my ear like a hummed lullaby.

•   •   •

T
HE MYSTERIOUS AIRSHIP
flew again above the Fair, and many of the hundreds turning out for
Heart of the White City
stood in the street to watch the flicker of light in the night sky. A man in a top hat took his opera glasses from their leather case and focused them on the passing ship. Others followed suit until the promenade was crowded with gentlemen in full dress and ladies in gowns standing still, staring up, their binoculars to their eyes. I slipped in and out among them, as graceful as a vapor, not knocking a knee or brushing a sleeve, twisting myself this way and that. By the time I'd reached the front door, I'd lifted the ticket I needed.

I took my seat, which was smack-dab in the theater's middle, my view partially obstructed by the woman in front of me, her hat decked out as the Chicago World's Fair—white buildings with balsa walls and a tin Ferris wheel that turned with a click-click-click with every nod of her head. And she nodded often, an agreeable sort flanked on each side by a gentleman taken with her flair for vaudeville.

I was afraid I'd be caught in my counterfeit seat, but when the lights dimmed and the pit orchestra's music thundered from far below, I quit worrying.

As the curtains opened, Heart arrived in Chicago in the back of a hay cart pulled across the stage by a team of actual horses neighing and snuffling. All in the audience applauded the audacity of it, and the stunts and sets only got trickier and fancier with each plot twist. When snow fell on poor Heart peddling matchsticks in a winter scene, big electrical fans blew shaved ice into the audience, speckling our cheeks and sending up chills. A scene in a pillow factory featured a cast of hundreds on a tiered platform, actresses plucking real ducks, stuffing real pillows, stitching them shut. Plucking, stuffing, stitching, plucking, stuffing, stitching. That alone would've been a sight to behold, but then out came Wakefield's cyclone at low spin. The cyclone machine was far gentler than before, sending only white feathers fluttering across the theater to hover and sway. Many in the audience reached above their heads to try to pluck the down from the air.

When summer arrived, live butterflies were unleashed from the wings and they flew out to light on our sleeves and flutter against our ears. And as my eyes followed the stumbling flight of one, its wings seemingly too heavy to keep it afloat, I cast a glance along the wall, and there she was. August's vision, in a sense.
Cecily
, up above.

•   •   •

C
ECILY AND
W
AKEFIELD
were arriving late, stepping up to the balcony to the private box nearest the stage.

She came home
, I thought. All my fear, all my anger and dread from missing her for days, fell away at the sight of her, as if I had only to meet her in the lobby after the show, take her arm in mine, and escort her, with magic and grace, back to the rooms of our past. I didn't even feel any ache of ire toward Wakefield. He'd brought her back to Omaha healed. He was only a device of our reunion.

The relief worked on me like a swallow of morphine.

I then noticed that I wasn't the only one looking. Many in the audience had let the aim of their opera glasses drift away from center stage and up to where Wakefield sat with Cecily on a blue settee. A waiter brought them champagne, and the popped cork shot from the bottle to fall and bounce off the lip of the stage. The men and the women stared and whispered.

Wakefield had had their private box built so near the front curtains, he and Cecily were practically among the performers. The box even seemed to lean forward, threatening to tip them into the footlights. The railing of their balcony was garlanded with smilax and lilies that drooped and spilled forth, so much so an actor might pluck one without even stretching his reach.

“May I?” I asked the woman next to me, holding my hand out for her opera glasses. Though a tad taken aback at the request, she nonetheless shared.

The glasses, shockingly powerful, bolted me so close so quickly, I felt the fear and dread return with a thud in my head and gut. Any of my newfound forgiveness was gone in a blink. I studied Wakefield and Cecily. He somehow seemed indifferent, as if he sat alone. Cecily had no help with the tricky clasp of her cape.

“Rushing the season with that fur,” I heard someone mutter to someone else.

“Owl,” said someone else altogether. Cecily's cape was a gray fox riddled with feathers, as if the pelt had been let into the henhouse. “I saw that cape in a private showing, upstairs at Brandeis. Owl feathers. And an owl's head at her shoulder.”

The owl's eyes flickered in the light from the pyrotechnics on the stage. I heard a gentleman say, “The furrier plucks out the eyes and swaps them for agates. And the beak is made of gunmetal, with some gold at the tip.”

“Disturbing,” a woman said.

When Cecily shrugged off the fur, I thought I could hear a gasp rise up from them all.

“Wearing
red
?” someone said, appalled.

“When out with a widowed man?”

“My glasses, please?” the woman next to me said, holding out her hand. I returned them to her, then returned my gaze to Cecily.

Look for me
, I chanted to myself,
look for me, look for me, look for me
, watching Cecily stare into the champagne she didn't drink.

Cecily then picked up her own opera glasses, and she scanned the audience before her. And the audience, feeling caught in their scrutiny, shifted the aim of their glasses back to the stage with a snap of their necks.

I, however, kept my gaze steady.

I stood up.

The men and women behind me hissed at me, insisting I be seated.

And Cecily's glasses stopped. She saw me. And she didn't look away.

“Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” I whispered, high-stepping over the legs and feet of the men and women as I headed for the aisle, jostling against their knees, tripping on the dust ruffles of gowns. I steadied myself by grabbing ladies' shoulders and the tops of men's heads. The men and women grumbled with disgust at my maneuvering. “Pardon me, pardon me, pardon me,” I said. They slapped me and shoved, only tumbling me more. Finally I fell, stumbling into the aisle. I got to my feet and rushed to the lobby and up the grand staircase.

But when I arrived at their box, there was no one inside. They'd fled. Were they fleeing
me
? I heard fast footsteps, heels clanging against metal stairs, and I walked toward the noise. I reached the top of a spiral staircase and spun down along its bends. A backstage door, when I reached it, was locked.

I walked back to the private box, stepped inside, and took a seat on the settee. Cecily had left her glass on the railing, half full of champagne. I picked it up and pressed my lips to the lipstick on the rim, and drank from it. I raised my glass in a toast to all those who stared up at me, and with that gesture, they snapped their opera glasses away, back toward the stage, as Heart arrived at the Chicago World's Fair. A scrim fell away to reveal an ornate and sturdy facade made of genuine marble and granite, the ornate stonework standing in for the paste and plaster of the actual White City of 1893.

And at my feet was Cecily's handkerchief. I picked it up and ran my thumb along the letter
C
stitched in the corner. It was a message to me, I was certain.

I finished Cecily's champagne, then poured myself more. I was in no hurry. I felt my whole body slow, my blood, my heart. Cecily and Wakefield had run from me. The thought of it, of myself as a threat to their happiness, was bliss.

T
HOUGH
I
DOUBTED
Rosie's capacity for murder, I did worry when I first saw all the stolen documents—President McKinley's schedule, his seating plans, maps of his paths, copies of his speeches, photographs, even swatches of fabric of the suit he'd be wearing—and the manner in which the anarchists studied them in a dark corner of the beer garden, the way they scrawled notes and arrows and circles throughout the blueprint of the Grand Court. The anarchists had been discussing assassination all summer with what had seemed idle and harmless complaint. But if a man had had a mind to truly shoot the president, it became quite clear that the Peace Jubilee would be the day to do it.

Our soldiers were still dying in Cuba—keeling over from yellow fever—but we were told the war was won and done with. The fever was an epidemic, not an enemy act, the senators said. The battling, at least, was over, and it became unpatriotic to consider the war anything but the most dramatic of victories. President McKinley, the ink still inky on his peace treaties, would get a hero's welcome at the Fair, and thousands and thousands were expected to turn out for the Peace Jubilee of speeches and parades in late September.

With autumn chilling the air, a man could vanish into that crowd, could tuck any kind of weaponry into his coat, could hide within a scarf, and not be at all conspicuous. And McKinley fancied himself a man of the people. He wanted to shake hands with the common folk and lean in to hear their every question and concern. “He keeps his ear so close to the ground,” one newspaper said, “he gets grasshoppers in it.”

I doubted the anarchists' toil would amount to much, so it was the list of dinner guests among their papers that disturbed me the most.
Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield.
The sight of it—that
Mrs
.—had sickened me. Had they married alongside some burbling hot spring, a wreath of pansies in her hair, a daisy in his buttonhole? I refused to believe it, no matter how likely it seemed.

She had run from me at the theater, and had been hiding ever since. I had even stood at the front gate of the Wakefield estate one day, in a downpour no less, waiting for someone to come in or go out. A pack of dogs had kept me from climbing up and crawling over. They growled and barked and threw themselves against the gate, driven to break through and lunge at my neck, to swallow my throat, to keep me from telling the truth.

So when I saw that the Mrs. would be dining with her Mr. at the president's table, my plan had been a simple one. I would leave her a note.
Meet me on the roof
, I would write. And I would place the note beneath her plate.

Or perhaps I would say even less. I could drop the handkerchief she had dropped for me, the embroidered letter upturned, and when she saw it, and looked around, I'd be there nearby. I'd leave through a door, and she would know to follow.

Rosie and I spent a week scheming, mapping out my quiet ambush, and the plot grew more and more complicated. To infiltrate a president's event, even just to drop a hankie, would take a cast of thousands, it seemed. We enlisted the aid of an entire network of anarchists strung throughout the Fair, the Fair far thicker with anarchy than I'd realized—waiters, managers, florists, janitors, cooks, and maids all having settled themselves deep within the Peace Jubilee's inner workings.

It began to feel patriotic, my stolen moment with Cecily. With the anarchists so fixed on all the mechanics of it, my love affair seemed destined to save the president's life.

•   •   •

M
Y ROLE THAT NIGH
T
was that of a waiter. One of the cooks in the kitchen tied back my long hair with a piece of twine used for the trussing of game birds. Another waxed my beard with a few fingers of lard, twisting the end of it into a dandy curl.

I stood entirely still at my station, holding a carafe of wine, a tea towel over my forearm. “You're to do
nothing
,” a woman manager told me, with a scold's snap of her tongue. I lurked behind a palm leaf, watching the room become more and more frenzied in preparation for the guests, the staff giving the forks one last polish, the maids fussing with the flowers so the petals sat just so.

My hand was in my pocket, and in my pocket was the scent bottle—the little souvenir I'd bought Cecily. I was risking rubbing the sheen off the shell, so much did I run my thumb over it for luck.

I'd convinced myself that all success with Cecily hinged on that bottle. I'd even rehearsed in my room the many ways it might go. Would I simply press the bottle into her palm without a word? Would I ask her to hold out her hand, and would I place it there? I could give her the bottle first, or I could give it to her last, before turning and walking away. She would be pleased with the little cheap gift. It would take her back to our lazy summer, to the way we drifted along in the swan gondola, and the carousel, to our long afternoons collapsed on the chamomile lawn. And she would remember that she couldn't live without me.

The tables had been arranged in a hollow rectangle, and the dinner guests began taking their places just minutes before six. There were a hundred of them in all, one hundred of the city's most notable. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that the men and women from Wakefield's cyclone party would be in attendance, so when I spotted Mr. and Mrs. Brandeis, and the Kimballs, and the Rosewaters, I attempted to sink into my suit and hide myself away.

In my fidgety determination to become invisible, I dropped the carafe, and all eyes turned on me. The carafe shattered at my feet with a sharp crash, soaking the bottoms of my trousers with red wine, and splattering the skirts and pants of anyone nearby.

One of the women, in ivory, squealed with horror at the sight of her dress freckled with wine. Her escort, as it turned out, was the dreadful Baker, the pompous young man who'd seemed so proud of himself at the Pink Heron Hotel.

“Look alive, chap,” he snapped, glaring right into my eyes. I froze, a swallow of spit caught in my throat. I was convinced I'd been caught. I was caught, and in seconds I'd be hustled out by my collar. Baker probably knew that Wakefield had stolen Cecily from me, and he would see right through my efforts to lurk unseen. I'd be lucky if I wasn't arrested and charged with some kind of treason. There were likely all sorts of laws against former thieves sneaking into presidential dinners. “At least make an attempt to save your own dignity, man,” he said. “Maybe gather a damp cloth for the poor dear?”

A waiter appeared right then with the cloth in hand, and Baker made much of kneeling before his lady to blot the spots on her dress. Another waiter attended to the spill with a mop.

Baker hadn't recognized me. Of course he hadn't. Even if I'd walked right up to him and shaken his hand and told him my name, I still wouldn't exist, because he would never remember anyone who didn't matter. I was only a waiter, and a clumsy one at that.

My absence made me feel bold.

The woman who'd told me to do nothing suddenly appeared in front of me. She snatched my arm tight and led me away while giving my elbow an ungentle twist. “Pretend to fold napkins,” she said, pushing me up to a table. “And do a better job of doing nothing this time.”

When I picked up a napkin, I noticed all the other napkins that had already been folded and laid out across the table—they'd all been tucked and twisted together into the shape of swans.
Swans.
It felt like a symbol, a promise. A row of maids lined up at the table in a rush, the skirts and puffed sleeves of their aprons fluttering, and each one gently lifted one linen bird into her two cupped hands. They cradled the swans one by one to the tables as the guests were led to their seats.

•   •   •

E
VERY LADY IN THE ROOM
wore a hat, and every hat looked big enough to snap a lady's neck. Their faint shadows were tremorous with all the gossip. I watched as a puzzled bee buzzed from one patch of velvet flowers to the next. There was a hat with a whole bird's worth of plucked feathers, and another with an enormous silk bow with the wingspan of a hawk. There were wax apples with leaves of lace and strawberries of blown glass. One hat with bells tinkled and chimed with the lady's every nod.

And then there was Cecily, utterly hatless. She looked even more beautiful than she had at the theater, but I would've needed opera glasses to study her. The president's table was clear across the hall from me.

How was it that I couldn't simply walk the vast distance and sit at her side? How had she become someone I wasn't allowed to know?

All those hats in the room set to bobbing at the sight of Cecily. Wives leaned past their husbands to speak to the other wives. The faint shadows in the room shivered with all the gossiping.

I was proud of how she so scandalized the room without saying a word. She simply sat there, indifferent to them all, her eyes on the swan on her plate, thinking only of me.

•   •   •

A
T EACH PLACE SETTING,
clipped in the hinged beak of a little silver dove, was a card with a guest's name in a scrolling and looping script. Where
Mrs. Wakefield
was to be seated, I had left a plea on the back of the little menu atop her plate. At the bottommost of it I'd etched, in a faint scratch of pencil:
When you see this, meet me on the roof. Please. Ferret.

And I'd carefully placed the handkerchief, near the leg of her chair, embroidery up. It served no purpose in the plot. It was only a sentimental gesture.

I'd been so afraid of Wakefield seeing the note somehow that I'd barely pressed the pencil's tip against the menu. I'd inched the message as close to invisible as I could get it. At a glance you would see only a smudge, much of the mark fading into the grain of the linen paper. The plan: After the dinner plates had been cleared, as the staff served the dessert in a flurry of bowls and spoons, the ice cream melting beneath everyone's very noses, a waiter would lean over to place a spoon at Cecily's side and whisper in her ear. He would prompt her to read the back of the menu. She would do so, then send a glance around the room. Her eyes would find their way to mine, to linger, then look away. She would wait for Wakefield to fall into a conversation with President McKinley to his left, and she would slip from the table. Her ice cream, molded into the shape of the battleship
Maine
, would sink into a puddle as she and I hid on the roof.

But that's not how it went. Not quite, anyway. Cecily did sit in the right place. Wakefield did indeed ignore her for much of the dinner as he busied himself with impressing the president. The waiter did whisper in her ear, and Cecily did flip her menu over to look at the back of it. But somehow in the plotting of it all I'd forgotten something key—Cecily wouldn't be able to read a word of my note without her glasses.

It wasn't that I'd forgotten about the glasses themselves—she'd often asked me to carry in my pocket the little paper case decorated with Chinese letters. But they were so part of her character, I'd forgotten their purpose.

So when I saw her twist her pretty face into a terrible squint in her effort to read the writing before her, I feared all was lost, or even worse. She might turn to Wakefield and ask him to read it to her. For all she knew, the words on the menu could be as dire as an anarchist's warning. When you're in a room with a president, I realized, it was as if you were all made of china. Your every move seemed under scrutiny by everyone else, because even the weakest tip-tap could shatter the whole royal works.

I felt myself flush with sweat. I brought my thumb to my mouth to gnaw nervously on the edge of my nail. And then, without a thought, I stepped forward.

Every waiter I passed, every maid, shot me a look of shock, as if they knew all about me. They knew I was a man broken by love and jealousy—there was no telling what I might do if I stepped from my corner. They could only help a fool so much.

The presidential table was set atop a long platform, so everyone in the room could see McKinley slurp his turtle soup. The floor creaked beneath my feet as I walked up, but no one could hear anything above the chatter of the crowd and the rattling of spoons. And I was nothing. I was a waiter. I was confident in my invisibility. If I'd been an anarchist intent on murder, I'd have had a bullet in the president's brain in a matter of seconds.

I crossed the dais, walking behind them all as they ate their ice cream. I ducked down to pick up the handkerchief she hadn't even noticed, and I placed it atop the table, the letter
C
showing, and whispered into Cecily's ear. “Meet me on the roof,” and I nearly wrecked the whole operation in my impulse to stay. She wore, again, the extract of sweet pea. The smell of her perfume worked into my senses and surprised me with its familiarity—it carried with it our entire lost summer, and every minute of it worked up into my thoughts. I needed to kiss her ear, her neck.

Nonetheless, I moved on. As I passed behind the president, I saw a thin thread loose from a seam, and without pausing to think, I quickly twisted the thread around my finger as I passed behind his back. I snapped the thread off without even slowing my step.

I twisted and untwisted the thread around and around my finger as I left the platform and walked through the hall.
I'll give it to Doxie someday
, I thought, with a pang of regret.
I'll tell her it came from the president's suit.
Ever since I'd first thought of making Cecily my wife, I'd been thinking of all the things I'd save for our little girl, all the fragments of our first summer together.