The Shining Girls

Harper ^{16 AUGUST 1932}

Heavy tree-fern fronds curl over on either side of the florist’s window in the Congress Hotel, like curtains on a stage. It makes the transaction a performance for the people passing through the foyer. He feels exposed. It’s too hot. The smell of the flowers is too sweet. It crawls behind his eyeballs, heavy and stuffy. All of it makes him want to get out of here as quickly as he’s able.

But the fat fairy in the apron insists on showing him all the possibilities, segregated by color and variety. Carnations for gratitude, roses for romance, daisies for friendship or loyal love. The man’s rolled-up sleeves expose dark bristling curls like pubic hair that creep over his wrists halfway to his knuckles.

It’s impetuous. A risk when he’s been so careful with everything else. He has waited four months so as not to raise suspicion, nor appear too eager.

There’s no light in her. Not like his girls. And yet she’s more than the low dullards that trudge through the days, interchangeable in any of the Chicagos if you only look past their clothes. He likes her callow viciousness. He likes the sense that he is defying something.

Harper ignores the sprays of pale pinks and yellows and fingers the petal of a lily, splayed open obscenely. At his touch, the stamen drips powdery gold over the black and white tiles.

‘Are you sending condolences?’ the florist asks.

‘No, it’s an invitation.’

He pinches the head of the flower closed and something inside bites him. His hand jerks, crushing the flower, knocking several long stems from the bucket. The sting quivers in his fingertip, the venom sac at the tip deflated and sapped out. From the mangle of petals on the floor, a bee crawls out, wings torn and legs dragging.

The florist stamps on it. ‘Gosh darn insect! I am so sorry, sir. It must have come in from outside. Can I get you some ice?’

‘Just the flowers,’ Harper says, shaking his hand, brushing the sting away. The burn is ferocious. But it clears the heaviness in his head.

‘Nurse Etta’ the card reads, because he can’t remember her last name. ‘Elizabethan Room, Congress Hotel. 8 p.m. Regards, Your Admirer.’

On the way out, his hand still throbbing with the poison, he hesitates at the jeweler’s and buys the silver bracelet in the window, hung with charms. A reward if she shows up. That it matches one already nailed up on his wall is a coincidence, he tells himself.

She’s already sitting at the table when he arrives, peering round the room to see, her hands locked tight over her purse in her lap. She is wearing a beige dress that flatters her figure, even though it is a little tight around the arms, which makes him think it’s borrowed. She’s cut her cherry-brown hair and styled it in finger waves. She looks amused when she sees that it’s him. A pianist tinkles a sweet and empty tune while the band sets up.

‘I knew it was you,’ she says, her mouth twisting ironically.

‘Did you?’

‘I did.’

‘I thought I’d take a chance.’ And then, because he can’t resist: ‘How is your gentleman friend?’

‘The doctor? He disappeared. You didn’t know?’ Her eyes glint in the yellow light of the chandeliers.

‘Do you think I’d have waited so long?’

‘Rumors were he got some girl knocked up and ran off with her. Or got in trouble gambling.’

‘It happens.’

‘Bastard. Wish he was dead.’

The waiter brings lemonade. With a twist, which Harper has paid extra for. It’s too sharp. He has to stop himself from spitting it out over the tablecloth.

‘I brought you something.’ He takes the jeweler’s velvet box from his pocket and slides it across the table.

‘Aren’t I the lucky girl?’ She makes no move to take it.

‘Open it.’

‘All right.’ She reaches for the box. She takes the bracelet out and holds it up to the candlelight. ‘What’s this for?’

‘You’re interesting to me.’

‘You only want me because you couldn’t have me before.’

‘Maybe. Maybe I killed that doctor.’

‘Is that right?’ She folds the bracelet around her wrist and extends it for him to fasten the clasp, bending back her hand so the tendons stand out in sharp relief among the fine network of veins under her skin. She makes him feel uncertain. His charisma doesn’t work on her the way it does with others – she’s wise to him.

‘Thank you. Do you want to dance?’ she says.

‘No.’ The tables around them are filling up. The women are better and more dangerously dressed, in sequins and thin-strapped dresses. The men wear their suits with obscene confidence. This has been a mistake.

‘Then let’s go back to your house.’

It’s a test, he realizes. For her as well as him. ‘Are you sure?’ he says. His hand throbs with remembered pain from the bee sting earlier.

He takes her the long way, so the streets will be emptier, even though she complains about her heels and eventually takes them off, along with her stockings, to walk in her bare feet. He leads her the last few blocks with a hand clamped over her eyes. An old man gives them a baleful look, but Harper kisses Etta on the head. See, he’s saying, it’s just a lovers’ game. It is, in a way.

He keeps her eyes covered as he slides the key into the lock and helps guide her under the boards crossed over the door.

‘What’s going on?’ she giggles. He can tell by her soft panting breath that she’s excited.

‘You’ll see.’

He locks the door behind them before he lets her see, guiding her towards the parlor, past the dark stain on the pocked and dented wood in the passage.

‘This is fancy,’ she says, looking around at the fittings. She spies the decanter of whiskey, which he has refilled. ‘Should we have a drink?’

‘No,’ he says, grabbing at her breasts.

‘Let’s go to the bedroom,’ she whispers as he steers her to the couch.

‘Here.’ He pushes her down on her stomach and tries to pull up her dress.

‘It’s a zipper,’ she says, reaching to tug down the metal teeth. She wriggles, pulling it over her hips. He can feel himself starting to lose it. He wrenches her hands behind her back.

‘Stay still,’ he hisses. He closes his eyes and summons images of the girls. Opening up under him. Their insides spilling out. The way they cry and struggle.

It’s over too soon. He groans as he rolls off, his pants round his ankles. He wants to hit her. Her fault. Slut.

But she turns over to kiss him with that sly, darting tongue. ‘That was nice.’ She moves her mouth down to his lap and even though he can’t stay hard, it proves more satisfying.

‘Do you want to see something?’ he says, absently rubbing at the lipstick smear on his testicles. She’s sitting at his feet on the floor, her dress hanging off her shoulders, hand-rolling a cigarette.

‘Seen it already,’ she leers.

He tucks himself away. ‘Get dressed.’

‘All right.’ The bracelet jangles around her wrist as she takes a long pull on the cigarette. She exhales a cloud of smoke between the neat bow of her lips.

‘It’s a secret.’ He feels a thrill at telling her. It’s a violation and he knows it. But he needs to share it. His great and terrible mystery. The same goddamn thing if he was the richest man in the world and didn’t have nothing to spend it on.

‘All right,’ she says again, a knowing crease at the corner of her mouth.

‘You can’t look.’ He won’t take her too far. He needs to see her limits.

He uses his hat this time to cover her face as he takes her out the door, but she still gasps at the light. They step out into a balmy afternoon with an insistent breeze and the spattering of spring rain. She catches on quick. Harper knew she would.

‘What is this?’ she says, her fingers digging into his arm, staring at the street. Her lips are parted, enough for him to see her tongue running over her teeth, back and forth, back and forth.

‘You ain’t seen nothing,’ he says.

He takes her downtown, which is not so different, but then they follow the crowds down to Northerly Island park, where the new World’s Fair is underway. Spring of 1934. He’s been here before in his wanderings.

‘The Century of Progress’, the banners proclaim. ‘The rainbow city.’ They walk through a corridor of flags among the throngs of people, excited and happy. She bugs her eyes at him, watching the red lights tick up the side of the narrow tower made to resemble a thermometer. ‘This isn’t here,’ she says in wonder.

‘Not yesterday.’

‘How did you do this?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ he says.

He quickly tires of the marvels, which seem quaint to him. The buildings are strange and, he knows, only temporary. She shrieks and clings to his arm at the dinosaurs that wag their tails and move their heads from side to side, but he is unimpressed by the crude mechanics.

There is a replica fort with Red Indians, and a golden Japanese building that looks like a broken umbrella – all jutting spokes. The House of the Future is not. The General Motors display seems laughable. A giant boy with a distorted puppet face sits astride an outsize red flyer wagon, riding it nowhere.

He shouldn’t have brought her here. It is pathetic. The limits of the imagination, the future painted up all gaudy like a cheap whore, when he has seen the reality of it, fast and dense and ugly.

She picks up on his mood and tries to turn it around. ‘Will you look at that,’ she exclaims, pointing at the rocket-shaped gondolas of the Sky Ride scooting back and forth between two massive pylons on either side of the lagoon. ‘You want to go up? I bet the view is breathtaking.’

He buys their tickets, grudgingly, and the elevator swoops them to the top with dizzying speed. And maybe the air is fresher up here or maybe it was only a matter of widening his outlook. The whole city is laid out before them, the entirety of the fair, strange and new from this height.

Etta takes his arm, pressing her body against his so he can feel the warmth and give of her breasts through her dress. Her eyes glitter. ‘Do you realize what you have?’

‘Yes,’ he says. A partner. Someone who will understand. He already knows she’s cruel.