Seated in bed together, wearing very little and propped up on pillows, Millie rereads a letter from her friend in Victoria while Holly skims through The Daily World. A tea tray lies on the bed between their feet, from which they have been drinking tea made on her electric hot plate, and eating scones and jam from Notes down the street, like a comfortably married couple on a Sunday morning, except with less clothing.
(At the YWCA, although the matron doesn’t permit gentleman callers, an overnight female visitor is perfectly acceptable.)
“Take a gander at this, Millie. Hundreds of folks poisoned drinking booze in New York.”
Mildred puts down her letter to scan the article in question. “It says the government hired scientists to poison it.”
“Yup. And the bootleggers hired the same scientists to make it drinkable again. So I reckon the Feds decided to up the stakes.”
“It’s like a game of euchre.”
“Poker more like, with human chips.”
“Which makes it a bit more than a game, I think.”
Holly puts down her newspaper and laughs. “Sugar, you’d be surprised how serious men take their games.”
Mildred’s smile disappears. “Please don’t call me that.”
Holly puts on a serious face—with her short hair she could be a teenage boy who has come across an injured animal.
“I am sorry, dear, hush my mouth. And there you were just starting to cheer up. It’s funny how a word can turn to poison in the mind.” She leans over, plants a kiss on Mildred’s lips and gives her a hug that lasts a long time.
After a while, Mildred pours herself another spot of tea. “Oh it’s all right, love. I take back my objection. I don’t want others having to tiptoe about, afraid to utter a word that might set me off. Somehow that would mean that he succeeded in what he wanted to do.”
“Even so, I better switch to honey. This stuff can haunt you for a long time. Thanks to my Uncle Boone, the smell of chewing tobacco still makes me want to throw up.”
“Actually, I think I’ve become allergic to brilliantine.”
“Well at least he didn’t run to biting you.”
“Why? Was that a possibility?”
“The Imperial Wizard in Indiana liked to bite. The girl Stephenson murdered had bite marks all over.”
“Really?”
“Really. I reckon you can’t make up that stuff.”
“I must say, it would make me extremely wary of Klansmen in Indiana.”
“Wariness is always good policy, honey. This thing that happened to you isn’t like lightning. With a good-looking gal it can strike twice, even a third time. Are you sure you don’t want to learn to shoot?” She takes the pistol from the bedside table. “It’s very light—here, take it, the safety is on.”
“I’d prefer not to, my dear. But I must say that I wish I could fight with my fists.”
“No. You don’t want to mess up these pretty hands. Let me see those hands…”
A pause follows, in which neither speaks.
“Oh my. You have me feeling quite chuffed now.”
“Don’t know what that chuffed means, but it sounds swell.”
After a time, they rearrange themselves and continue their previous discussion.
“In Britain the consequence of extreme drunkenness is a night in gaol, not a civil war over drink.”
“We Yanks like a war. Peps us up. How many nations have a flag with a poisonous snake?”
“Blimey. Should I be afraid of you then?”
“I don’t reckon so. We Americans prefer to kill each other.”
“Nice of you to keep it among yourselves.”
“Mind you, we fought the Brits for a spell. But that was a long time ago.”
“Well then we must kiss and make up.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
“You do know that this is illegal, dear.”
“We Pinkerton’s agents deal with crime, not morals.”
Later, Mildred tries once more to contact McCurdy on the telephone. It seems obvious that for some reason he has gone to ground.
She doesn’t know why she cares. The man has never inspired anything but intense ambivalence. But over time, for some reason she has come to feel responsible for him.
And she has information to sell.
Working at the switchboard next morning, while automatically plugging jacks, flipping switches and saying the same two sentences over and over again, Mildred wonders over the protracted silence from her oldest client. During her twenty-minute lunch break, she tries one more time to contact McCurdy.
No answer.
She hangs up after three rings for the sake of the operator—operators hate having to sit around waiting while somebody’s telephone rings twenty-six times. (That is Mildred’s personal record; the caller had taken time to visit the loo.)
Getting up for a stretch on her afternoon break, she pauses behind Myrtle Bee’s station and, glancing over her shoulder at the switchboard, she notices something unusual:
To avoid misfires, it is standard procedure for operators to insert a detached plug in an unused circuit. On Myrtle’s board, the port to Room 342 is open—and Room 342 is, in fact, a storage room. It has no telephone at all.
Curious.
At the end of her shift, after freshening up with a washcloth and eau de toilette and putting on her fall coat, Mildred emerges from the staff entrance, blinking in the light (though the day is by no means sunny), and takes a moment to breathe the aroma of horse shit, automobile fumes and sawdust—which she finds preferable to the switchboard room pong of varnish, perfumed soap, body odour and bad teeth.
Turning east, she heads down Robson to Granville and from there to the Castle Hotel, a three-storey structure with a mixed reputation, just across from the New Orpheum.
In front of the hotel, she stops to admire the massive vertical neon and, below that, the electric message: A Man’s Home Is His Castle.
Or so he may think.
The lobby smells of floor wax and palm leaves, not disinfectant; the floor is covered with patterned tile, and not scuffed linoleum. Intact lounge chairs are lined up like soldiers. The wall plaster appears dry, free of cracks and mould.
Potted palms divide the room to graceful effect, while a sign directs ladies to a Cozy Ladies Rest Room, together with a drawing nicked from a furniture store advert. A line of text introduces Mrs Kahn, The personal supervisor, who gives special attention to ladies travelling unattached.
However, some things do remain constant no matter how posh the hotel, and one of them is the expression on a desk clerk’s face whenever an unaccompanied woman requests a gentleman’s room number. These chaps must attend classes to achieve that ever-so-faint expression of snide knowing.
Using her poshest vowels, Mildred replies to the desk clerk with the withering Thank you very much indeed that Badminton girls were taught to adopt at mixed socials whenever a gentleman needed frosting out.
In front of McCurdy’s door, she knocks several times, to no response. She doesn’t fancy a set of bruised knuckles, when intuition tells her that, dead or alive, he is in there.
The lock is even flimsier than the one at the Imperial Palace—in fact, it seems rather pointless to lock the door at all.
The door clicks open within a minute. Stepping into the room, already she can hear him snoring.
Of course he would snore.
Through the bay window, the multicoloured neon signs give the room a lurid cast even in daylight but she can see that the carpet is relatively new and not tarred by suspicious stains, nor is the wallpaper peeling in the corners. To her right, a door leads to a private bath; next to it, a steam radiator emits a comforting hiss.
All in all, the hotel’s amenities provide evidence (as though one needs any) that hack writing is more lucrative than poetry.
By the room’s decoration, it appears that McCurdy has made himself at home, to the extent that the furniture arrangement is an improved version of his previous digs. The tiger oak desk has been moved to the window alcove with the most comfortable chair facing it; on the walls hang the same photographs of Sassoon and Dickens, and the priest with the cross balanced on his nose.
On the floor near the dressing table, standard hotel prints of the English countryside lean like dominoes against the wall.
Next to the bed is a nightstand containing a lamp, a stopped clock, a long-stemmed pipe and a pair of spectacles. The telephone has been placed on the floor to make room for a copy of Ulysses. (As far as Mildred is concerned, the book was published as a cure for insomnia.)
She recognizes a faint sweetish smell, neither tobacco, nor hashish, nor muggle.
The man lying on the bed, seemingly asleep in his threadbare jacquard dressing gown, is also familiar, though in a somewhat reduced version. At the best of times, McCurdy seems to regard eating as a nuisance; from the look of him, it appears as though he has decided to quit the habit altogether. As well, his skin has taken on a tubercular pallor she has seen before.
She sits on the side of the bed, lights a Turkish cigarette and blows smoke into his face, a smell she knows he detests. His nostrils twitch. After an unattractive snort, the eyes open.
“Miss Wickstram. What are you doing in my room?”
“I haven’t heard from you in a dog’s age, and you’re usually such a pest.”
“I’m not entertaining visitors at present.”
“I can see that. I thought you might have taken a shelf in an opium den. Now I see you’ve done the next best thing.”
“These are my private quarters. I don’t remember giving you a key so that you could snoop about while I was asleep.”
“I picked your lock. A friend taught me how.”
“Is he a thief, this friend?”
“Not as such. Quite the opposite, really.”
“In any case, please go away now.”
He closes his eyes and crosses his arms on his chest; the face transforms into an imitation of a death mask, with arms. She gets up, exits the room and walks down the hall, leaving the door ajar. Downstairs, as she passes through the lobby, she gives the smirking desk clerk her frigid Badminton stare.
In Maxine’s Lunch across the street she orders a chicken club sandwich, wrapped to take away, and coffee in a Dixie cup. Men. Even in a business relationship one ends up running errands for them.
“Sit up, lazy bones. Time to eat.” How she dislikes playing nurse, but someone has to do it.
McCurdy’s eyes form slits. “Eat?”
“Eat. Surely you remember eating. Chewing, swallowing—like smoking, but different.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes.” His eyes close again, as though he’s nodding off.
“If you don’t sit up, I’m going to pour hot coffee on your groin.”
The eyes open again. Reluctantly, seal-like, he wriggles up to a seated position. “You’ve always been a bully. And a blackmailer as well.”
Using a framed print of flowers as a bed tray, she unwraps his sandwich and places the Dixie cup in his hand.
He tastes the coffee and grimaces. “This coffee is lukewarm.”
“That’s because you can’t be trusted with hot food. By the way, if I may ask, how long do you plan to lie in bed muggled?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he says with his mouth full.
“You do know that when you run out of money you’ll be out on the street. Hotels are fussy when it comes to unpaid bills.”
“I’ve taken that into account.”
“And you owe me thirty cents for lunch.”
He finishes his sandwich and coffee. She removes the framed print from the bed, replaces it on the floor against the wall, tosses cup and wrapping into the wastebasket by the desk, returns to the bedside and sits, watching him carefully. She contemplates telling him about the incident in the Imperial Palace, but decides she isn’t ready to discuss it with McCurdy—he might find it titillating, which would force her to sever their acquaintance for life.
She decides to imitate a police interrogator in a movie: “Okay spill it Eddie, what’s your problem?”
He closes his eyes again and pretends to be asleep. She lights another cigarette and blows more smoke in his face. At length, he sighs as if to say, You’re not going away, are you? and opens his eyes.
“If you must know, somebody shot at me.”
“Metaphorically or literally?”
“What?”
“Was it criticism or bullets?”
“The latter. Shot at me when I was leaving the club.”
“Do you mean the Lumberman’s Club?”
“I have no other club, you know that. Don’t badger me for details.”
“Did you report this to the police?”
“What do you take me for?”
“Someone with a brain in his head. I could be wrong.”
“The answer is no. I came here, locked the door and took something to calm my nerves and collect my thoughts. That was… some time ago.”
“Always playing the hero.”
“You’re such a comfort. Go away now.” He removes his glasses and returns them to the nightstand, using his blindness to put distance between them.
After igniting another cigarette, she gets up and looks around for an ashtray. Finding none, she retrieves the empty coffee cup and returns to his bedside.
“Being afraid to go outside, I assume you’ve been taking delivery from Chinatown.”
“I order by telephone. It’s part of the luxury package.”
“And who is your chemist this time?”
“I maintained my connections. They were happy to hear from me.”
“What’s the appeal, Eddie?”
“I dreamed of almond blossoms. Of little painted cups full of golden tea, of a golden voice calling my name—it wasn’t your voice.”
“In any case, now that you’re back in the stinky world, let’s work our way through the story. You were shot at, or think you were shot at, you became terrified, then embarrassed at being terrified, then you retreated into a dope haze. I must say, most people would have reacted similarly. For myself, I’d be under the bed.”
“It’s different for you.”
“And how is that?”
“You’re a woman. On you, fear is attractive.”
“Well thanks awfully.”
“Men are supposed to exhibit courage under fire. In the army they call cowardice getting the wind up. Well I got the wind up. I froze on the spot. On the front, men like me were put against a wall and shot.”
“Yes. That must have taught them a lesson.”
His right hand flutters over the nightstand, feels for his glasses, wraps the temples around his ears and looks her straight in the face. She knows this to be one of his stage tricks, that he is well aware how huge his hazel eyes look from the other side of the lens.
“Put yourself in my position, Millie. The streets of downtown Vancouver are lined with men who spent years getting shot at on a regular basis and watching other men turned to bloody tissue paper. And here is the acerbic social critic who managed to grovel his way out of doing his duty, now unmasked as a snivelling coward. Can you imagine what Trotter would make of that? Let alone The Beacon! And what then, Millie? I’ll tell you what: either I get out of town and freeze my nuts off in Winnipeg, or I blow my brains out with a borrowed shotgun.”
“You reporters always exaggerate. You were refused because you’re blind. I’ve seen thinner jam jars than those things on your face.”
“They’ll say it’s all a pretense. It’s how I evaded service.” He lays back on the pillow as though exhausted. Behind the spectacles, the eyes close.
“In any case, Eddie, while you’ve been sulking beneath the covers, I’ve acquired an informant within the LCB, who has come upon something quite big—in fact, there’s hope for a major scandal, if someone has the nerve to break it.”
After a pause, one eye opens, then the other. “A major scandal, you say?”
“Mr Cunning kept files on people—including Clyde Taggart.”
“What sort of files?”
“I shall find out. It wasn’t a Christmas list, that much I can tell you. But first we discuss my fee.”