Elaine would start her new job at the Chronicle in three days.
She spent the afternoon on Nostrand Avenue, shopping for work ensembles with Gloria, her friend from the poetry circle at the Starlite.
Gloria was bowled over by the fact that she was now associated with someone who worked at the Chronicle. She couldn’t stop talking about Elaine’s luck. “It’s funny, Elaine. I thought it was a big deal for me to get a secretary job at Dr. McAllister’s office. But—my God—you’ll be working at the Chronicle. I don’t even think I can get over it.” Gloria grabbed a burgundy leather purse from a shelf; then she turned, wide-eyed, after a glance at the purse’s price tag. “Oy. This purse is certainly not made with the salary of a doctor’s secretary in mind.”
Elaine picked up the purse and set it back down. “Nor is this purse designed for the salary of a fact-checker at the Chronicle.”
“Really? I thought anyone at the Chronicle would be doing really well. I mean, it’s one of the biggest papers in the country!” Gloria furrowed her brow, seeming dubious. “You know, Elaine, I really won’t think you’re bragging if you tell me you’ll be doing well.”
“There’s nothing to brag about, dear. I’ll just be contributing some money to the house—that’s all.”
Gloria was baffled. “Who would have thought?” Then she laughed. “I thought you would be rolling in the dough soon enough. Oh well, no matter—I still want to work for the Chronicle one day.”
Elaine grabbed a high-waisted skirt from a rack. “Maybe you can. If you really want it, maybe you can make it happen.” She held up the skirt to her body. “So, what do you think about this one here? What does this skirt say to you?”
“I think it says schoolmarm. Is that the look you’re going for?”
Elaine stared at the skirt for a long minute, considering; then she broke into giggles. “I knew I could trust you to be honest with me.”
After a few hours of shopping, Elaine found a couple of nice outfits and a new purse in patent leather. A professional style.
Everything looked sharp—assured.
Once she arrived home, she donned her new outfits and looked at herself in the mirror. She pretended to be the same as the clothes. Polished. Ready.
She was home, but Tommy was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t left a note either.
She walked up and down the hallway in her new shoes, breaking them in. Her feet ached, squeezed into unnatural angles.
But the echoing emptiness of the brownstone was more painful.
Tommy hadn’t talked much during the past couple of weeks, since it had come out into the open about her job.
He had worked more on his gadgets at home and stayed out more often.
And at nine tonight, he still hadn’t returned to the brownstone. But Catherine was back at the house, so Elaine straightened her brow and joined her in the kitchen for a late supper.
“How are you, dear sis?” Distracted, she peered out the window, as though Tommy might be there.
“Just dandy! But you look a little … off. Where’s the man?”
“We’re not married. I don’t keep track of him.”
The absurdity of her comment fell short of Catherine, who—absorbed with herself—switched the topic to a singing gig she’d gotten at a wedding. “Even the greats had to start somewhere!” she chirped.
“That’s great, Cat.” Elaine stabbed her food with her fork.
Catherine looks at her sideways. “You don’t seem happy for me!”
“I’m very happy for you!”
“Well, thanks—” But she appeared suspicious. “Hey, but really—you don’t know what Tommy’s up to this evening?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“He didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“No.” He would be in any one of innumerable pubs, slapping the table, foaming at the mouth.
His absence was his form of revenge.
She’d gone behind his back to get a job. And she went to the Starlite quite often.
Elaine cupped her chin in her hands, moving her weary eyes to the door that wouldn’t open—no matter how much she willed Tommy to come home. She could almost fall asleep at the table as Catherine droned on and on about her dream to be the biggest jazz singer in New York.
Then Catherine went back to talking about Tommy, playing the part of an adult. “You know—I really don’t think he should be going out drinking, Elaine. Tommy gets so crazed when he’s plastered.”
“You get crazy when you drink too, Catherine.”
“I know how to rein it in.”
Elaine cleared her throat and shrugged. “Well, I guess I get pretty crazy too when I go out. So, he’s just doing the same thing.”
“You’ve never had more than two drinks in a row. Please. And you never get crazy.”
“I had two and a half once.” Elaine was on the defensive. “Please, dear sister, put our leftovers in the fridge for Tommy, so he’ll have something to eat when he comes home.”
She had been trying for a prework routine of early bedtimes—not late nights at the social club, especially with some strange man lurking about. But as her sister chattered on and on, Elaine bit her fingernails, waiting.
Finally, her hand moving automatically, Elaine dialed the Starlite.
“Madeline speaking!”
Madeline’s voice was startingly high-pitched with uproarious laughter; it was as though she had been caught in the middle of some grand fun.
“It’s Elaine. Just wanted to see if you’re hosting tonight.”
“Absolutely! It’s comedy night. Come on down and join us! It’s been a while since we’ve seen you.”
“I’ll be there in a little bit.”
It would set a precedent, when Tommy came home, to find her gone. It was like a game: who could stay out the longest, who could live it up the most. Maybe it was the end. No bickering or nasty arguments. Instead, disappearances, as they flickered out of each other’s lives.
In front of the mirror above her bureau, Elaine freshened her makeup, her cheeks naturally flushed.
She yelled downstairs to Catherine. “Are you coming tonight?”
“I’m watching the telly. I need to take it easy—rest my singing voice.” Catherine made pretentious little hums with her throat, scales and la-ti-das.
“Fine,” Elaine said, then dashed out the door before anything could stop her.
She drove to the Starlite; she wouldn’t cross paths with Tommy out in the world, coming off the bus.
Once she arrived at the shop, she pounded the door, and a stray cat circled her ankles.
Madeline surprised her and yanked the door open with a whoosh of air.
Elaine was breathless. “My key wasn’t working.” All the regulars had a key.
“That’s because we changed the locks, my dear.” She ushered her inside, though they remained near the door, observing a performance from the back of the room. Others in the audience were already seated in folding chairs, facing a makeshift stage of garment boxes. Sandra was a mime—in an invisible box, its walls defined by the palms of her hands. Her box shattered and dropped her into an invisible boat, where she rowed with comic exaggeration against wind and waves. The whole room was in hysterics as Sandra built up an evident sweat, paddling on a river to nowhere.
For a brief moment, Elaine joined them in laughter, but she was out for a reason, and her hand clutched a key that didn’t work.
“Why did you change the locks?”
“Well—” Madeline moved them to a corner, behind a display of hats. “I’m almost positive that Fred has been trying to get a look in here. I bet he wants to see what’s going on in my dress shop at night. It had to be Fred—I saw him real quick, but I know that ugly forehead of his. I don’t know what he’s up to. I just want to keep safe.” Madeline brushed invisible crumbs off her skirt and smiled, then shifted Elaine back to the audience. “Here, have a seat,” she urged.
Someone else on stage was telling knock-knock jokes. The jokes were so outlandishly childish that the laughter built up as a prickly mockery of itself. The women on the ramshackle stage got more and more slaphappy as the night wore on, and even Elaine started to roll into hysterics along with them.
After the show, Harriet initiated a scavenger hunt. She asked Elaine to write little clues for the hidden objects, a task that served as a welcome focus for her attention.
Elaine set herself up in a corner, surrounding herself in bits of folded paper on the floor as she dreamed up two-liners to lead people on the right track in the hunt. These small acts of creation soothed her.
Just a few minutes into her solitary pursuit, Lisa ran up to her, startling Elaine out of her reverie. “Hey, Elaine! I was looking all over for you.”
“Hello, dear!” Elaine laughed. “You surprised me! Back from your latest trip already?”
“Yeah, I flew back in this afternoon. Took a little nap and decided to head over. Whatchya doing over here?”
“Just creating clues for a scavenger hunt. Very important business, you know.”
“It sounds like it! Do you need some help?”
“Surely! Do you want to help me come up with clues, or would you rather fold some papers?”
“I’ll take the folding part. My clues would probably just confuse people.” She laughed.
They made a neat assembly line—the two of them cross-legged on the floor, writing and folding. In an hour’s time, they managed to produce dozens of the little clues, which lay scattered on the floor around them.
Elaine stood up, brushing off her skirt. “I suppose we should get a basket to carry these over to the front.”
“Or we could just do this instead …”
Lisa winked, grabbing a handful of clues and tossing them up in the air. The papers fluttered all around them, like so many snowflakes.
Elaine stared in disbelief. “Did you really just do that?”
“I do believe that I did!” With a smirk, Lisa assumed her own proper accent and grabbed a greater handful, scattering them farther.
“I don’t know that I should have introduced you to this place. You’re trouble!” Elaine squealed. The two of them scooped up bits of paper, raining them down on each other, until the other ladies saw and had to join in too. They all laughed wildly and created a mess, and Elaine even delighted in her own cries: “It’s a blithering disaster! A disaster!”
By the end of the evening, she was caught up in it all. The Starlite had worked its magic on Elaine yet again.
She stayed overnight, bunking on a cot like a giggling member of a slumber party. Cynthia kept arranging her hair into various braids and giving Elaine a pocket mirror to see what she thought.
But her voice soon changed in fright. “Elaine,” she hissed suddenly. “I think I see something.”
“What?” Elaine bolted up.
“I just saw something in the mirror.”
“What?”
“I think it was a rat.”
“Where?”
“Look down there!” She pointed to the shadows, at the feet of someone’s cot in the far corner.
Elaine closed her eyes. “That’s just a ball of stockings.”
“That ball of stockings sure has a long tail!” They stared, and the ball with the tail scurried into the shadows. “We need to catch it!” she hissed.
“And do what with it? We’re locked in for the night.”
“Yeah.”
The two of them repositioned themselves on their cots and squeezed their eyes shut, not daring to open them until daylight illuminated their lids.
With all the chatter, Elaine got an hour or two of sleep. At the break of day, she stepped out onto the sidewalks of Brooklyn Heights, unsteady on her feet. But she exerted herself to drive with caution, which required her to stare at the road almost unblinkingly.
Back in the brownstone, Tommy was asleep in their bedroom, his shirt stained, atop the blankets.
Elaine undressed and gingerly got into bed as a sleeping Tommy rotated his body toward her.
His scent was alcohol and fried foods, and he was snoring. She inhaled his breath as though she might determine how much he’d drunk.
Elaine’s eyes adjusted, and she caught sight of his face in the light that filtered in through the blinds. She drew her breath in horror; a sizable gash glistened red on his forehead. In the shadows of the early morning, it didn’t seem that the blood was fresh.
Wordlessly, she rose from bed to get a bandage. She went back to him, and his glossy hair slipped through her fingers as she tried to get a light hold on his head.
Still asleep, Tommy tilted his body away from her.
The next evening, Elaine’s friends sat in the small circle of chairs in their literary circle.
“So good to see you, hon.” They kissed her cheek, and for the moment she was enveloped and safe.
Normally she led the circle, but in the two weeks since finding out about her job, Elaine hadn’t visited the Starlite as much, so Gloria had taken over for her. “I figured we would all take turns reading,” Gloria said. “Then we could get to some books.”
There was an art to deciding what to share, how much to reveal. The women had decisions to make each time they removed scraps of paper from their purses and unfolded them, each time they flipped through well-used notebooks, trying to find the right things.
“Does anyone have anything?” Gloria asked.
“I think I do—let me just dig for a little bit.” Elaine’s purse had become a mess, full of bits of scrawled poems on napkins. “I have a little something.”
At the same time, in the back of the Starlite, the women danced, joked, and gossiped, and the volume grew louder. Madeline stood by the door in a defensive upright position—arms crossed over the finely tailored bodice of her dress.
There was an edge to the air that night. The ladies talked louder than usual. Their movements were more exaggerated, demonstrative.
“I wrote this piece the other day.” Elaine cleared her throat. The women in the circle leaned in, trying to hear her.
The Magnifying Glass
Underneath the sharp focus,
Inside the curve of your mouth,
There is an intention,
Which I lose,
Or maybe you’ve never given it to me.
Each day it’s something else.
She had more, but she didn’t read it. Everything was about Tommy, the tempestuous roller coaster of his moods, his magnetism. Everything was encoded into metaphor but obvious to someone who really knew—like Catherine, who was nearby, warming up her voice before she sang them some jazz.
She got the commentary from the circle:
“That was great, Elaine!” Cynthia patted her on the back.
Gloria was lost, pondering. “It left me with this strong feeling, like a sort of longing.”
“I think it’s like when something draws you towards somebody and you can’t stop yourself, you just can’t get enough.” Harriet nodded knowingly.
“It’s like Bernard, like that character I’m dating. There’s something crazy about him, but I just can’t help myself!” Cynthia continued. “He’s so on and off, all these highs and lows. I hate it! But he’s gorgeous, and so romantic! What should we do with these men?”
They had understood, though she hadn’t said anything direct. Elaine excused herself and made her way through the clusters of women and clothing racks to Madeline.
Madeline was sealing the door shut. She tightened a series of dead bolts and triple-checked the lock on the doorknob. She startled to see Elaine hovering over her shoulder, but she flashed a cheerful smile as her hand rested on the knob.
“I had to catch you before everyone else.” Elaine was breathless. “I was wondering if I could talk to you—about Tommy, you know …”
“Of course, darling.” Madeline was gracious and brought Elaine aside, behind the cash register. She lifted two cocktails from the top of the counter. “Care for a sip?”
“No, thank you.”
“What can I offer you, dear?” She sounded distant.
“I need your advice. I just got this stellar job, so now I can leave Tommy. But I don’t know how to do it. I mean, what if he comes looking for me and tries to get me back? And what if I leave him and he—I don’t know, gets hurt? Or hurts himself? Then it would be all my fault.”
Madeline shook her head. “You’re always welcome here, whenever you need to stay—if it’s a social club night or not, you can feel free to bunk at night until you’ve got yourself a steady place.” Her eyes flickered away, and then she smiled at Elaine again.
“Thank you, Madeline. Because—” She paused. “I’m not happy.”
Elaine bit her lip and turned away.
“If you’re not happy, you need to change something.” Madeline turned to face her fully; Elaine finally had her complete attention.
The small creases near Madeline’s eyelids were the marks of someone wise. Someone who understood. Someone who had gone through it all and survived.
Yet soon Madeline’s eyelids fluttered back to the door in wariness, and the spell of her attention was broken.
She had done what she could to barricade them in for the night.
The ladies were light and carefree, twisting and twirling like there was nothing to fear.
Once the song finished, Madeline wandered over to the record player to shuffle through the albums. The women called out their requests, but she shook her head and continued to riffle through the pile.
Then there was a sound. Something unnatural.
A high-pitched disturbance—
A sharp, metallic clang.
A sickening crash of glass. A split-second assault on the eardrums.
The burst of something shattering.
Near the feet of a window mannequin: a pointed lump of concrete. It was a chunk of asphalt, with tiny sharp stones that poked out from its edges.
The explosion of glass had deafened them into silence.
Shards of glass glinted up from the carpet, cutting a swath in the sanctuary as nighttime air blew in through a large, jagged hole in the window.
It was dark outside, with nobody to be seen.
The ladies stared at Madeline, who was quiet.
She was ghastly pale, and so were they.