Chapter Thirteen

Feeling newly reborn from the ashes of her honeymoon, Roz sat at her dressing table debating whether she should put on the hairnet the beautician suggested to keep her waves in place. She drew the stopper out of the peacock glass bottle and let the seductive Parisian fragrance wash over her. Her senses seemed more acute these days, she suspected because of the baby, her baby, not Burke’s child.

She heard him come in, mumble something to Wilbert, and tread heavily up the stairs, tripping and cursing to the top. When he entered their bedroom, Roz continued to fidget with the objects on her dressing table, the silver-backed brush and comb with the matching and monogrammed hand mirror to check the back of her hair, gifts Buster had given her for a wedding present, items she would hardly need any more. His hulking shadow fell across the looking glass.

“What have you done to yourself, Rosie?”

“I cut my hair. I had my face done. For the first time in a long while, I like what I see in the mirror.”

“I don’t.” Burke snatched up the round box and cloche hat sitting on the dainty French empire chair where he usually threw his clothes. He dumped out the long, honey-blonde braid and twisted it around his fist.

“When you leave the house, Rosamond, you will pin this at the back of your neck and wear your hat pulled down over the rest of your hair until it grows out. Mrs. Burke Boylan does not go about looking like a cheap whore, or smelling like one either.” Buster knocked over the peacock bottle. Expensive perfume soaked the tabletop and filled the air with its exotic essence.

“That’s true Buster, because Mrs. Burke Boylan doesn’t go out at all, does she? She doesn’t get paid to say, ‘Oh Buster, you’re so big, you’re so strong’ like the prostitutes who endure your abuse.”

Buster gripped her shoulders and spun her around to face him on the dressing table stool. He moved one hand as if to seize her hair and pull her head back, but his fingers fumbled in the shingled ends where her bun used to rest.

Roz laughed in his face. “I’m leaving you, Buster.”

Burke drew back his right fist still entangled in the severed braid and lashed out. Roz turned her face aside, but he clipped the top of her cheekbone, the edge of her eye. Groping for a way to defend herself, she fell back against the dressing table. Her hand closed over the peacock bottle. She smashed it against the bridge of Buster’s nose. Blood spurted over both of them.

Rosamond struggled past the stool and the bulk of her husband who covered his nose with both hands. She nearly made it to the door. Then, he fell upon her, turning her with his grip, smashing a fist into her stomach, hitting her again lower as she crumbled to the floor and curled around her belly. He drew back his foot and kicked his wife hard, twice in the ribs, as he’d wanted to kick Kid Pesci when the wop made a fool of him in the ring.

He wanted to work over her pretty face until no man would look at her again, but Wilbert called from the kitchen, “Everything all right up there, Mistah Boylan? You done had an accident? I gets the broom and the dustpan.”

An accident, of course, this was an accident. At the least, he’d get the house and sympathy if his wife did not survive. The best idea would be to get rid of the bitch entirely. Burke picked up Roz as if she were no more than a piece of trash to be taken out to the alley. She gasped but did not become fully conscious. He carried her to the head of the unguarded stairs and flung her over the edge. She should have hit hard, maybe hard enough to kill her, but that old fool darkie came along down the hall with his cleaning supplies.

Wilbert dropped the broom and held out his arms. Miss Roz fell right on top of him, and they both went down on the hardwood floor.

“Lordy, Mistah Boylan. I think I done broke my arm, and Miss Roz, she bleedin’ down below. Gots to call the doctor right now.”

Burke Boylan clambered down the rest of the stairs. Wilbert’s eyes went wide as he took in the man’s swollen nose and blood soaked shirt. “Yeah, I’ll go for a doctor all right.”

Buster stormed out the door. Minutes passed, too many minutes. Miss Roz bled more and more from between the legs. Wilbert, who had been holding her head up with his good arm, laid her gently on the floor. He struggled with the telephone and dialed Gilbert St. Rochelle from the number in the book.

“Doctor, you gots to come quick. Miss Ros’mond. I think she dyin’.”