The Paragon Hotel Page 6

  “It isn’t very sportsmanlike to try to get a lady drunk to cadge her secrets from her bosom.”

  “Nah, I don’t need no hooch for us to converse. You already done bought ‘Crazy Blues,’ remember? Can’t talk music with a stranger and agree on so much and not end up chummy, that’s science. Now, I’ll sit here real quiet like while you eat that soup and drink that tea. Do my best lamppost impression, honest to God. After that, you’re gonna warble like a canary.”

  “And if I decline this invitation?”

  One shoulder lifts in what seems—incredibly—commiseration. “Then we sit here awhile. I ain’t obliged to fill my four hundred hours for the month, Miss James, on account of I capped out eleven thousand miles first. That there’s the trick—distance, not time, and you’re outta harness for longer. Or you are if you’re cracked like yours truly, and willing to take nothing but cross-country runs. We hit pay dirt at eleven thousand and thirty-six miles here in Portland. Shoulda congratulated me on another stint finished, but you was under the weather, so I’ll forgive that you didn’t bake a cake. Today’s Tuesday, and I got till Friday to warm this chair. Eat.”

  I’m raising a spoon before I even know the white flag is in hand. Believing this is due to hunger alone would be an unwise astigmatism—that was an awfully authoritative tone.

  You clearly understand this fellow about as well as you understand Hindustani. Pay attention.

  Silence seems a fair proposal, so I allow it to permeate the room like Max’s cigarette smoke, testing its quality. Friendly. Wary. If Max were any other fellow, I’d be terrified enough to dangle out the window like a set of drying stockings by now.

  The soup is surprisingly decadent. Fish and clams and oysters, rich and bloodred. Cioppino, we’d have called it in Harlem. You could ladle this stuff in gilt-edged china, drop it on a white tablecloth, and charge six bits for it in Manhattan and no one would say boo. There are stories in this soup—Miss Christina’s stories. I wonder where she learned them, and why they taste this complicated.

  As I eat, a stronger breeze tickles the muslin curtains. It’s different from anything I’ve ever smelled before—cedar sap and river sludge, yes, but those are faint bass notes against the high chord of rain-washed sky. As I eat, I sneak glances at the cheery cobalt chintz bench beneath the window, its color fading in the expiring light, and wonder what sort of Nobody might sit there listening to a new jazz record or writing a letter. Since I’m dead, and thus can’t scratch out notes to any cherished correspondents anyhow, the idea is quickly soaked with rich romance.

  I wonder if Maximilian would ever pay me a call. Walk slowly up behind me in the mirror, trace his fingers over my neck as I’m brushing my hair.

  The drugs are winning by three lengths, as drugs are wont, and you’re done with your soup.

  Glancing over, I discover Max regards me as doth the archaeologist the pot shard. Cigarette dangling, lids at three-quarter mast. As if he’s listening to “Beale Street Blues” at four o’clock in the morning instead of just contemplating a girl.

  I set my spoon down with decision. I survived my previous life by keeping staunch allies—the loyal-unto-demise variety, and I delivered the goods despite certain fatal errors in judgment. Fatal, seeing as I am now postmortem. Anyhow, I had, if you will, a “family.” The only thing I’m better at than vanishing is loyalty, and Max seems a worthy candidate. Time to peel off the sweet flapper like the second skin she is.

  Here goes nothing—or rather, here goes Nobody.

  “Thanks for the chow, Max. It was awfully big of you. May I have a cigarette, please?”

  Grinning, Max slouches messily. “Aw, hell. There you are. I ain’t much educated, but I can find a trumpet in a teacup, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Speaking of teacups, mine sprung a leak.”

  Shaking his head in amusement, Max clears away both tray and cart. He tops us up again and adds a second cigarette to the one between his lips. Lighting it, he hands it over.

  I take a drag. It’s asphalt and moonlight, better than the soup. Not quite as good as the liquor. If you’re wondering, this is the Nobody I was around Mr. Salvatici. Sees everything and everyone, comments with unflinching candor, wears couture Lanvin crinolines and oilskin hip waders with equal aplomb, can talk jazz for hours, drinks like a trench laddie, and follows orders. Burrows into closets for people’s skeletons. That sort.

  “So,” I posit. “We’re pals, you say.”

  Max angles his jaw, appraising. “Yeah. So about the time you got yourself keyholed . . . we should converse about that. These lunatics are my second family away from Brooklyn, and I done brung you here.”

  “You didn’t have a gun to that clever noggin of yours, Max. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He says it musically, on a fall. “Yeah, I did.”

  While this is fascinating, I don’t admire to antagonize my new brother-in-arms. Thus, I table the question, though I burn to know why I was dropped here the way a cat drops a dead bird for underappreciative human associates.

  “My name really is Alice James. And I really did grow up in Harlem. But you knew that already. I’m half Welsh and half Italian, if it matters to you.”

  Max smiles with his lips, eyes abstaining. “I’m half German and half Negro. You ain’t shocking no one in this room, Miss James.”

  “Well, it’s a sight different for you.”

  “Yep. I’m aware,” he reports with steel in his tone.

  Blood rises in my cheeks. “Of course you are. What a dreadful buffoon you must—”

  “Let’s keep to the topic.” Max shakes out another smoke. “This injury what we’re discussing—you done told Mavereen and Dr. Pendleton it was thanks to a rotten beau. Was that true?”

  “Not to a literalist.”

  “Were you in hot water, or was it purely accidental?”

  “Sure, supposing you call the invasion of France an accident.”

  “How amusing you make that sound, Miss James. Maybe I shoulda said Second Lieutenant Maximilian Burton when we was first acquainted.”

  I open my mouth and shut it again. This . . . this explains a great deal.

  The daring rescue, the forcefulness, and the way he moves under that moss-green shirt, just for starters.

  “That wouldn’t have been very bright, George,” I tease.

  He shrugs. “Well, now you know. I can learn you some French, if you’d care to. Like how you said, your time is elastic.”

  “Teach me some French, I suppose you to mean.”

  “No, I meant ‘loin ya.’” Max winks. “I parleys Brooklyn and French—for an English lesson, you wanna talk to Blossom.”

  “Yes, I suspected she was a student of the Queen’s tongue.” Tapping ash into my saucer, I hesitate. “Sorry. Um, I promise I’m not pulling the damsel stuff again. Haven’t yet broached this topic with anyone living, we two met a few fleeting days hence, you understand.”

  “How’s about I’ll help? The shot was aimed square at you, then, and the trigger was pulled by I s’pose a pretty dangerous guy?”

  “Thankfully, it was his backup Pocket shooter, just a pellet gun, really, which is the reason we’re having this tea party.”

  “And why did he decide you needed a gap in the midsection, then, Miss James?”

  “Please call me Alice.” The smoke must be stinging my eyes. I pass my thumb under both, edging away salt water. “I actually meant to say that on the train, believe it or not. Not, I suppose.”

  “Damn straight I believe you. There’s more than just one reason why you’re at the Paragon Hotel, Miss—Alice.”

  Nobody, I correct him in my head. I take a rib-cracking breath and start hacking away again. When my eyes open, a water glass rests on the table and Max is standing there radiating bonfire levels of concern.

  “Thanks.” After several
cool swallows, I’m as recovered as possible. “Sit down, for God’s sake, you’ll wake the children.”

  Max returns to smoking with his elbows on his knees, unthreatening and round-shouldered.

  Steady as she goes.

  “Right, here’s a general line on the situation.” I address the wall, watching a film from long, long ago and the other side of the continent. “I was born dirt poor, quelque surprise, everyone in Harlem is. The fellow who shot me was my bosom associate from the cradle. As we advanced in years, we both fell victim to shall we say unfortunate events, and shall we also say unwholesome influences. You might as well know that I belong to a gang of shameless bootleggers who often find their business interests at cross-purposes with other hoodlums. I found myself in the crosshairs of those same cross-purposes. Undeclared war.”

  “Declared or undeclared, it don’t make a dame any less croaked.”

  “Precisely so. When I was hit, a policeman on the graft named Harry Chipchase—I always have to say both names, his moniker is too precious—promised to conjure up an Alice James-ish corpse for me. I vanished and presume Alice James is already buried, so obviously writing love notes to the boys back home is nixed. Probably I got away clean. Probably no one is looking for me. So here we are. Prohibition, my poor choices, and your good graces brought me to the Paragon Hotel to do with as you see fit. I mean that literally, Maximilian. You’re a second lieutenant, you said—your freshest recruit, reporting for duty, sir. I’ll be up for anything you ask within the fortnight but at the moment ought to refrain from ballet.”

  I make a flourish with my hand in lieu of bowing. My nerves sing like a teakettle left to burst, but that doesn’t make any sense. My luck is holding. I haven’t walked under any ladders or touched a lightning-struck tree. And I didn’t even jinx myself by saying Nicolo Benenati. Max’s spine hits the back of the chair as he ruminates, both of us finishing our cigarettes while the sky turns vacant and black as any corpse.

  Max remarks, “So you’re mixed up in the liquor racket. So’s half the damn country. I dabble too. You ever kill anybody yourself, like?”

  I shake my head. “Never.”

  How many people died on your account, though? Have you even any idea?

  Dust motes of pure silence sprinkle through the air.

  “Here’s what I’m gonna propose.” Max’s voice rings, no longer speculative. “You care to share any of this here yarn with the others, that’s your business. I for one won’t say peep. You had some bad breaks and then some worse ones. Similar to the picture you painted me before, but this one I can look at without squinting.”

  “Ever so pleased my tale of woe passes muster.”

  “It don’t go very far. But it keeps to the roads, like.”

  “I’ve poured out to you just about all I can,” I protest, exhausted. “I am as putty in your hands, Max. You’re safer not knowing the whole encyclopedia, but I’ll keep at it if you want me to.”

  “Yeah, I got that part. We’re good.”

  “You’re not tossing me through the window? Truly?”

  “We’re on the fifth floor, Alice—I ain’t never been keen on smashing music lovers. Thanks for playing straight with me.”

  He stands and stretches. I feel wrung out, altogether drained. If only I could trust this magnanimity—we aren’t the same race, the same sort, aren’t even pals. Not the way he says we are. Not until I’ve guarded his armor chinks, bled a bit for him. Every circus charges an entrance fee. Mr. Salvatici’s sure as hell did. By rights, I ought to be put through my paces. We’re just a pair of people who talked music before Nobody’s masks started cracking. And instead of leaving this suspicious dame to shuffle off the old coil, Max half carried me home to his nearest and dearest.

  Why, for God’s sake?

  “Am I at all like your sisters?” I blurt as he drapes linen over the spent cart.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Forgive me, but. I overheard Blossom mention that you had white siblings. Is that . . . is that why you’re going so far out on a limb?” I gesture helplessly between us. “This pledge to keep my secrets, it’s an awfully nifty thing, but as for your part. Christ, Max. I need it to be real. Not just decency or politeness, things no one gives a damn about. Do I remind you of your sisters?”

  Max’s deep-set eyes narrow. They’re darker than gold, lighter than bronze. The color of an elegant brass rail in a speakeasy. Or, better still, of a pocket watch that’s been taken out and consulted over a few generations.

  “No, you don’t remind me of my sisters,” Max concludes. “You ain’t nothing at all like my sisters.”

  “But I do remind you of someone?”

  “Yeah, sure you do.”

  “Because you remind me dreadfully of someone, you see.”

  “Is that so.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll be. Did you like the guy?”

  “Not always,” I admit, and my heart beats in ragtime. “Did you like the person I remind you of, Max?”

  “No,” he says, not even having to think it over. “Not one little bit. Good night, Miss James. You keep safe and warm, you got me? Sleep well.”

  ◆ Five ◆

  From this study I agree that the Negro ought to be educated and helped but I would not want to associate very much with them. I guess there are Negroes better than I even, but to me a Negro is a Negro.

  —“A NEGRO IS JUST A NEGRO,” The Advocate, Portland, Oregon, May 1, 1926

  When I wake again, all is velvet darkness, and barely audible footsteps brush-scuff past my door.

  Mind cavernous with dread, I spring from the mattress.

  Twin wounds shriek. Light paints a stripe under the door and my shaking hand hits cool metal. I tug, clutching the frame as I struggle. There isn’t another way out of this room, so I must duck through the assassin’s arms and escape, over river and under skies, find a slow boat to Shanghai or someplace more remote before—

  “Jesus! Are you—no, no, don’t struggle like that. I’ve got you, honey. It’s only me.”

  Blinking away the nightmare, I’m in an ordinary corridor. The carpet is a whirlpool of sage and maroon, the walls above the chair rail a pale melon tone. Strong hands have me by both elbows, and subtle vanilla perfume caresses my nose. Blossom’s artfully manicured brows twist with alarm.

  “Oh God. I’m sorry.” A sting at the crook of my elbow registers. Another tiny puncture wound—two where previously only one winked up at me. “I think Dr. Pendleton gave me more morphine. How could I have missed that? I was afraid that you might be . . . I was half sleepwalking.”

  “Well, you certainly aren’t operating at peak efficiency.”

  “That’s a swell understatement. I’m so embarrassed.”

  Her eyes are amused at their corners. “Can you stand?”

  “I can do any amount of dandy tricks. That one—yes, that seems to be back in the repertoire. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s far from the first time a near stranger has flown into my arms, and should I lose my natural magnetism, I assure you I’d simply die of boredom.”

  Adjusting the low-scoop collar of my borrowed nightdress, I shiver. A shadowy figure appears down the hall. I barely stifle a gasp before I realize it’s only a maid, neatly uniformed and capped, with a pair of pillows in her arms. Her eyes slice to me, lingering.

  “That’s one of Mavereen’s minions,” Blossom whispers teasingly. “Don’t attempt any late-night debauches around here, your sins will find you out. Well. Treat your debauches with due moderation, anyhow. Our dear Mavereen is a monument to virtue, rather of the antique variety.”

  I nod. My attention cuts back to the yawning shadow of my bedchamber. My crackling nerves want nothing to do with it. The dim behind me is fume dense, paralyzing.

  Night is for knife thrusts and the powder flare of gun muzzles. Nig
ht is for reports to Mr. Salvatici, when you play the Angel of Death.

  Night is for the last time you were shot.

  Before you knew what brand of evil you were mixed up in.

  “Seeing as I’m just back from the Rose’s Thorn and still indecently sober, why don’t you keep me company?” Blossom’s china-doll lips are rouged crimson and puckered in sympathy. “Oh, the Rose’s Thorn is a club where I perform. Portlanders are lunatic over roses—it’s absurd, they’re everywhere. Come along to my room? It’s a ghastly prospect to contemplate sleep directly after finishing a set, so I never attempt it. Saves me time I would otherwise have spent studying the ceiling.”

  “Saves it for what?”

  “Why, for leisure, of course, which is a sight preferable to insomnia. There is a great deal on my mind of late.”

  “Would I be intruding awfully much?”

  “Gracious no, honey, if you don’t come, I’ll only end up having a conversation with Medea. And I’m considerably too young and alluring to talk to cats.”

  A smile lands on my face, as welcome as an unexpected kiss.

  “A sightseeing trip sounds swell. It hasn’t been the jazziest of times in there,” I own as I shut my door.

  Blossom offers an arm draped in an eggplant-colored cloak. A fine mist dusts it, as if she were coated in cloud, and I wonder whether anything in Portland is ever entirely dry.

  “Lift the hem of that shift before you get a mouthful of carpet. There’s a good girl. You’re in room five fifteen, and I’m five twenty-three, just this way. Do you think you can walk so far? There’s a robe I can lend you as incentive, it’s the most alarming shade of green and would be simply decadent with your coloring. Wherever did you come by onyx eyes with such fair hair, by the way? If that blond is from a bottle, I’m Cleopatra.”

  “Dad was Italian.”

  “Oh, marvelous. Tell me at once how to insult someone in Italian.”

  “Puttana della miseria.” I note that she was correct to claim superiority of height—five foot nine, at the least. Her fashionably short hair is parted on the side and arranged in shining finger waves, topped with a spray of billowing purple feathers.