The Wicked City. Beatriz Williams

back against the wall and lift the right pole back over the left. Slide my arms back together over my cold chest. Bounce my shoe a little. Bounce, bounce. “Seems I’m right, then. The question is who.”

      She narrows her eyes until they just about disappear between the charcoal rims. Turns away and says, into thin air, “No. The question is whom.”

      “La-de-da. Someone’s got an education.”

      “So do you, Ginger. I’m just not ashamed to show it.”

      There’s the littlest emphasis on the word Ginger, which those of you born with fire in your hair will recognize. I consider the back of Millie’s neck, and the exact tender spot I’d stick a needle, if she were one of those voodoo dolls they sell in seedy little Harlem shops. Behind my shoulders, the wall is cold and rough and damp, and the air smells of mildew. Our guard yanks a packet of cheap cigarettes from his breast pocket and starts a smoke. The brief illumination of the match scorches my eyes. Three oh four. Ticktock. As the familiar scent of tobacco drifts across my teeth, the eyelids start to droop. The vision of Millie’s pale, smooth neck starts to blur. Not ashamed to show it, Ginger. Not ashamed, Ginger. Ginger. GINGER!

      An elbow cracks my ribs.

      “Ginger! Jesus! Wake up, will you?”

      I straighten off somebody’s shoulder. Adjust my jaw. Blink my eyes. Test my bones for doneness. You know how it is.

      “Ginger Kelly?” A man’s voice, a man from Brooklyn or someplace.

      “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name.”

      “Tell that to the judge,” Brooklyn replies, and the next thing I know the keys jingle-jangle, the cell clangs open, the handcuffs go snap around my wrists, and let me tell you, when a girl hears that much metal rattling around in her neighborhood, she’d better start sending up every prayer the nuns ever taught her, sister, because the devil’s at the door and the Lord don’t care.

       6

      MY THOUGHTS turn to Billy as this uniformed meathead drags me down the corridor, past this cell and that cell, contents murky and unknown. I wonder where they put the poor boy, whether they let him off because he’s a Marshall, whether he’s frantic about me now. Of course he is. That’s the kind of fellow he is. Dear Billy-boy. I guess I shouldn’t feel this kind of regret; after all, I didn’t exactly lead him blindfolded down the path of debauchery. Debauchery found him before I did. That first kiss wasn’t his first, and he knew one end of a martini glass from the other. Still. But for me, he might have spent the evening in the convivial atmosphere of his eating club, idly debating such innocent matters as the blackballing of unsuitable freshers and the prospects of the Tiger baseball team for the season upcoming, instead of getting himself arrested for consumption of Gin.

      But no lovesick voice wails my name—either real or assumed—as I stumble past the cages of the Sixth Precinct station house, and when we reach the stairs at the end of the corridor I conclude I’m simply sola, perduta, abbandonata. The old story. The stairs lead rightward up to the booking desk, but Officer Brooklyn turns left instead, opening a metal door with a metal key, and the sharp garbage breath of a late January alleyway strikes my nose like a billy club.

      “Say! What’s the big idea?” I demand, but Brooklyn takes no notice, just tightens his paw around my bare upper arm and hauls me up the steps to alley level, where a black sedan rattles and coughs next to the sidewalk, rear door open, exhaust clouding the atmosphere in a great gasoline fog.

      And you’ll forgive me for hoping that the dear, familiar head of my Billy-boy will pop free from the smoke of that backseat—the final death of my native optimism is still some weeks away—but there’s only room for two on the leather bench, and Brooklyn, pushing me inside, clambers in right behind me. Go, he grunts, and the tires squeal and the car lurches from the curb, and my forehead hits the front seat, and nobody says Sorry or even You all right? Nobody offers me a cigarette or an overcoat. We just zigzag down the frozen, bitter streets of the Village, straightening out at Fourteenth Street, while my teeth chatter and my brain aches, and a thousand smart remarks rise to my lips. I bite them all back, of course, because for one thing I can tell Officer Brooklyn hasn’t got the intellect to appreciate them, and for another—well, anyway. I merely observe aloud that we seem to be headed to the Hudson River piers—obvious enough—and Brooklyn grunts something or other that might mean Yes or else Shut your yap, and silence reoccupies the cab, except for the hum of the engine and the steam of our breath. I sit back and make myself small against the cold. When we slam to a stop outside a rusty tenement at Tenth Avenue and Twenty-Second Street, I permit myself a tick of triumph. You can hear the shouts of the stevedores, the busy clang of ocean liners obtaining coal and stores. If I’m not mistaken, those three black-tipped funnels over there, finding the moon above the triangular tips of the Chelsea docks, belong to the great RMS Majestic herself. Bound for England tomorrow morning. Lucky bitch.

      But for now. The tenement. That’s my real concern, because Officer Brooklyn is opening the door and dragging me across the seat to the crumbling sidewalk outside, and those sallow brick walls aren’t looking any more inviting on second glance. An old saloon occupies the ground floor, windows all boarded up, and a few piles of hardened gray slush decorate the flagstones outside. My pretty shoes slide right out from under me. I don’t think Brooklyn even notices; he just carries my weight on the slab of his right arm as I glissade across the granite. Behind us sounds the imperative whistle-chug of a New York Central steam engine, hauling freight up the middle of Tenth Avenue. He doesn’t notice that, either. Just bangs on the door next to the boarded-up saloon until it opens.

      “Oh, no,” I say. “Not on your life.”

      Brooklyn turns his head at last. He’s not a pretty fellow, our Brooklyn, all jaw and no forehead, eyes like a pair of walnuts begging for a nutcracker. Shoulders about to burst from a plain uniform-type navy overcoat. The raw color of his nose and cheeks suggests either excessive cold or excessive whiskey, though you can’t rule out both. Or even possibly some kind of emotion. Those walnut eyes goggle almost out of his skull, and who can blame him? I’m about half his size, a third his weight. My hands are cuffed at the back, and I can’t feel my toes.

      “I bite, you know,” I add.

      Brooklyn shakes his head and pulls me through the doorway. A sign flashes by, one of those brass plaques, sort of tarnished, but you don’t stop to read plaques when someone’s hauling you into a tenement to commit the Lord only knows what foul crimes on your person. Your mind spins, your stomach lurches. Your eyes fasten instead on inconsequential details, like the rough woolen texture of Brooklyn’s sleeve, and the overlapping pattern of scuffs on his brown shoes, and the worn-out sway in the center of each step, right where your foot goes, and the cold, moldy smell of the joint. You think, Damn it, this might be my last sight on earth, why can’t I find something beautiful? As if it matters. And all those taxis and fancy private automobiles will be lining up in the dawn smoke, one by one, to disgorge humanity onto the gangplanks of the goddamned Majestic, and no one will notice the item in the newspapers the next day, about a woman found dead in a Tenth Avenue tenement: some kind of prostitute, the detectives believe, and from the state of the corpse she must have put up a good fight.

      Because I will, by God. Put up a good fight. I’m putting up a fight right now, kicking and biting, deboning my limbs such that I slither momentarily from the shelf of Brooklyn’s arm, only to be scooped up again and hauled into oblivion. But there’s nothing to bite except wool and glove, nothing to kick that actually notices it’s been kicked. We swing around the landing and up another flight, and I’m breathless now, panting and jabbering, while the stained walls slide past, the color of misery, lurid bare electric bulbs, linoleum hallway, door thrown open by muscular hand, Gin thrown inside, toe catching on edge of Oriental rug, crash splat. Voice like a hurricane. “What the devil, Bulow? She’s not a sack of grain.”

      “She’s a damned hellcat. Bit my cheek.”