Mrs. Houdini(48)

Harry had often treated Fred poorly, however. It wasn’t intentional; Harry had never had any close male friends, and he wasn’t successful at making them. Perhaps out of a feeling of insecurity, he’d assumed a superior air around the tall, genial Fred. Harry kept making more and more money, and Fred kept making the same, plodding politely through his days at the bank all those years. But despite his success, Harry had always been envious of Fred. He never said so out loud, but Bess thought she knew why. It was because Fred was a happy man at heart. He never wished for more than he had. The oil investment, which had happened after Harry died, had come about quite by accident. Harry, on the other hand, was never satisfied. The money, the fame, Bess—none of it had brought him peace.

Bess looked at her watch. “You go on down to the beach, and I’ll meet you by the bathing house at noon.”

Downstairs in the lobby, she asked if she had received any messages. The clerk checked her box and came back empty-handed. She took a sip of tea in the salon for energy but couldn’t bear to delay any longer.

The news offices were adjacent to City Hall, set back a few streets from the boardwalk. It was midmorning, and throngs of men rushed back and forth across the green lawns with briefcases in their hands. Apparently, Saturdays were as busy as weekdays for newspapermen.

She entered the office lobby and was greeted by the clatter of two dozen typewriters. It was everything she had imagined—a room full of men in slim-cut suits and knit ties, calling over cubicle walls to each other, the air gray with smoke, the secretaries with their pretty bobbed hair and straight tailored suits. There was no reception desk, and Bess turned to one of the men rushing past her through the double doors. “Pardon me. Can you tell me if there is a Mr. Charles Radley in today?”

The man looked at her blankly for a minute, then waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the back of the room. She scanned the rows of desks but could not identify the top of his head among the dozens crammed into the corners. She removed her gloves; her hands were clammy from the heat. She did not remember there being so much news to write about when she had first come here with Harry. Back then, it had been a city that was still establishing itself. Now, she imagined, given its growing reputation as a symbol of the current age—all the excesses of luxury, crime, and sexuality—there was quite a bit of scandal to fill the pages of newsprint.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Charles, standing just inside the doorway, his glasses slightly askew, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder.

“Oh! You startled me!”

His face reddened. “Did I? I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s all right. I was distracted. I was just . . . remembering.” She patted the sweat off her forehead with the edge of her glove. She noticed that a few of the secretaries closest to the door were glancing at them discreetly. He seemed like a lonely man; she was glad to make them think he had some famous friends.

“It’s loud in here,” he said. “Would you like to go down to the water?”

She nodded, relieved.

“I have to tell you,” he said when they stepped onto the lawn, “I didn’t expect to see you here today. But it’s been on my mind all night. I can’t imagine what it is you have to talk to me about.”

It was a white morning, and hot; she watched couples in rolling chairs being pushed down the boardwalk, the women inside fanning themselves languidly. The colors were magnificent, the whole city like a confection—the pinks of the taffy, the pale cream of the sand, the yellows of the billboards . . . The piers, too, were crowded with dancers in red taffeta costumes and brightly dressed showmen, trying to lure in tourists. Charles helped her down the ramp onto the beach, where long planks of wood led to the ocean.

“The thing is,” Bess said, “I don’t think you’ll believe a word I have to say.”

Charles looked at her strangely. “Why is that?”

“Because you never met my husband. If you had, it might be different.”

“But I did,” he said. “I met him once.”

Bess reached for his arm. Her heart was beating rapidly. “You did? You said last night that you’d never met him.”

“I said I never knew him. But I shook his hand when he came out to do the jump on Young’s Pier, when I was eleven.”

Bess’s heart sank.

“I was fascinated by your husband.”

Bess sighed. She appreciated Harry’s fans, but they frustrated her at the same time. “Let me ask you something,” she said carefully. “Do you believe in magic?”

“I believed in your husband’s magic when I was little. But do I believe in it now?” He laughed. “No.”

“Do you believe that after we die . . . we can come back somehow?” She and Harry had had elaborate conversations about what lay beyond death. He had rejected her Catholic notions of white mansions and eternal rest, the whole idea of “rising” to something else. He believed in a murkier afterlife, that the dead still walked beside the living, perhaps only on a different plane. Sometimes, these people were even visible, like gray strands in the midst of color. If you lifted the veil, he said, then you could see them. But how to accomplish that—he did not know.

Charles pressed his lips together. “I’m not sure.” He squinted at her. “Why are you asking me all this?”