Bluebird, page 20
The room goes dark, and a bar of light appears beneath the door. Eva hears Rolf’s voice, indistinct in the hallway, and a woman’s giggle. She steps inside the closet, pulling Jake in after her. Very quietly, Jake shuts the door.
There’s not room for two people in the closet. If there were more clothes, or if the shelf was deeper or Eva taller, they wouldn’t have managed it at all.
“I’m standing … on shoes,” she whispers, struggling for balance. She’s got the case and her purse in one hand, and she can’t let them bang the wall. Jake puts an arm around her, holding her up.
“Do not fall,” he says near her ear. And then, “Which bedroom?”
For a second, she doesn’t know what he means.
“He’s got a girl,” Jake hisses.
“The other one.” But the wall of Rolf’s room is the same as the back of the closet. “Scheisse,” she mutters.
“Yeah,” Jake breathes. He adjusts his arm, trying to find a comfortable way of remaining perfectly still. The dark is stifling, the tobacco smell strong. The muffled sound of music wafts into the closet from the living room. Someone has turned on the radio.
Rolf cannot be here until he goes to work. The walls are clamping down like a trap. Eva breathes. And breathes. The woman’s voice erupts into laughter. Jake’s hand moves up to her back.
“Shhh,” he says.
“I do not like small spaces,” she whispers. “I do not like them …” Her pulse is racing, a shake starting somewhere in her middle.
Jake puts his hand on the back of her head, pushing her into his chest. “Close your eyes. Pretend you’re somewhere else.”
She closes her eyes. Breathes deep. Slow. Smells Jake instead of the tobacco.
Footsteps come down the hall, water running in the bathroom. There’s a dent in Jake’s chest that just fits her forehead. She can feel his heart beating. Fast, like hers. The water shuts off in the bathroom.
She turns her head, like she’s lying in bed, and slides her free hand around his side, under his jacket, hanging on. She can feel the muscles of his back beneath her palm, his breath pushing tight against her cheek.
This is wrong.
It’s unfair.
He doesn’t object. His thumb strokes her hair. One time. Then his hand tightens on her head.
The woman’s voice is loud, coming from close by. “You shouldn’t leave the window open, Kenny. You’ll get cats!”
Behind the other wall of the closet must be the kitchen.
Where they left the window open.
“What?” says Rolf’s voice. The w is a strong v, like Dr. Holtz. There’s a small silence. Eva imagines him running a finger along the window, where Jake’s knife splintered the wood before it tripped the lock.
“Wait here,” Rolf says. “I will only just …”
They hear the woman’s protests fade into the living room. And then footsteps come down the hall. The door opens in the room behind them, and Eva hears the click of the switch. It’s quiet, so quiet. And then, almost as if it’s right next to her, she hears the wooden scrape of a drawer opening.
More silence. And Eva knows exactly what Rolf is not seeing.
The photograph of her.
Why had she taken it?
The drawer slams shut. The footsteps move. Across the room. Down the hall. Jake reaches behind and puts a hand on the doorknob. Ready to keep Rolf from opening the closet if he can. Eva tightens her arm, and the door to her father’s room bursts open, the lights click on, shining on their feet from beneath the door. But there is another set of footsteps coming. Not a woman’s. These are heavy. Slow. Deliberate.
There’s another man in the apartment.
The walls of the closet shrink. Compress. They’re pressing on her lungs. Jake turns her head and puts her face back in his chest, holding it there. She breathes. And breathes. And the footsteps are in the room.
They pause, and in her mind Eva can see them pausing. At the desk. The desk that has no metal case underneath it.
And both sets of footsteps move briskly away. Jake lets out a breath. They hear low voices, the woman protesting. And all the noise moves to the other side of the front door. The steps creak and thump, beyond the wall, like feet are hurrying. And the door to the street shakes the floor as it shuts.
Jake opens the closet. They listen. Step out. Eva can’t hear a sound in the building. They move fast down the hall, Eva with the case and her purse, and in the kitchen, Jake puts a finger to his lips and takes a quick look into the alley. Then he mouths the word up.
She climbs onto the table and out the window, onto the fire escape, going as quiet as she can up the steps, Jake right behind her. The children across the alley hang on to the iron bars of the fire escape, watching from their mattress like a little prison.
When Jake reaches the third-story landing, he digs in his pocket and says softly, “Hey! Kids!”
And he flips a coin down and across the alley, glinting. It falls somewhere in the middle of them, making them scramble. Jake puts a finger to his lips and the oldest girl nods. And giggles.
They go up a ladder, over the edge of the wall to the sunken roof, where little chimneys and vents stick up here and there like pictures of cacti in the desert.
Where has she ever seen pictures of cacti in a desert?
“And here he comes,” says Jake. He’s on his knees, just peering over the edge into the alley. “He probably parked the girl in the diner across the street.”
Then Eva hears Rolf’s voice. “Little girl,” he calls. “Little girl! Did you see anyone go in that window?”
“Get lost!” the girl yells. She sounds like she’s thirty.
Jake snickers, then trots across the roof to the front of the building, watching.
“And …” he says, “he’s got his girl. She’s a nice one …” Though he says it in a way that means she isn’t. “And they’re off to the subway. Or maybe there’s a bus down there, not sure.”
“Was there anyone else?”
“No,” says Jake. “Just the two of them.” He turns to look at her. Smiling. “We’ve got him,” he says. “Give Cruickshanks the address and they’ll get everything they need.”
It’s true, Eva thinks. Everything Cruickshanks could want or need. They could move her right in. She could stay with her father while Rolf has his girlfriends over.
“Hey,” Jake says. “Are you all right?”
She’s leaning against the roof edge, face to the sky. Her father had been in that apartment, just on the other side of the door. For the moment, fear is winning over fire.
Jake comes to stand next to her. “There were two of them in there, and one wasn’t just a guard, was he? One of them is a sick bastard.”
“They are all sick,” Eva whispers.
“Okay, then. Which sick bastard is this?”
She shakes her head. “Just … a doctor.”
“A doctor. I’m guessing he wasn’t a very good doctor.”
“Some people would say he was.”
“But those are the sick bastards.”
She nods, and he puts his hands in his pockets. And when she dares to meet his lovely eyes, she is full of regret. Jake shouldn’t be here. He should have run. Fast, and far away from her.
“I need a favor,” she whispers.
His brows go up. “You really are something, you know that? Does it involve keeping you out of jail?”
She nods again, and he sighs.
“I think we’ve established that I have a hard time saying no to you, Bluebird.”
PAPA TAKES AWAY THE BOX AND SETS IT ON THE TABLE.
“When we cannot obey authority, what must happen?”
“We must be punished. So we can learn to be better.”
“And why does Papa want you to be better?”
“Because I belong to you,” she whispers. “And because you love me.”
Papa picks her up then. Around the waist, like a sack, arms and legs dangling from her pink dress.
“No, Papa,” she whispers.
“When you disobey, the punishment comes next. When you obey, you receive your reward. This is simple. It is fair.”
And now the door is coming. The little door with the dark behind it. Where things rustle. Where there’s no air.
“Please, Papa! Please!”
It’s coming, and its mouth is open, and the strong arms push her inside it.
And the darkness swallows her.
SHE TELLS JAKE that Anna Ptaszynska had been a friend. That the file was going to be difficult to read, and she wasn’t ready to read it, not tonight. That Mr. Cruickshanks would never let her, and then she’d never know. She would give the file to Cruickshanks after, but in the meantime, she couldn’t be seen taking the case into Powell House.
It was an easy lie, because some of it was actually the truth.
Jake takes her to a bus station in the basement of a hotel. The kind with lockers, to leave belongings in during a trip. He rents one, and gives her a key on a long string. The metal case goes in the locker, and when the locker door is open and Jake is on the other side, so does the gun from her purse. She doesn’t want that gun in the same room as Brigit. The key goes around her neck and under her blouse. Like a car key had once.
They leave the bus station, and go to an all-night drugstore near their subway stop. It has a telephone booth inside it, where Eva pretends to call Mr. Cruickshanks. She can see Jake through the front windows, smoking a cigarette while he waits on the street, looking at anyone who might be looking at them.
She’ll have to give Brigit the pills again and come back tomorrow, while Rolf is at work. She’ll take an umbrella. They won’t have had time to fix the window yet. And if her father isn’t there, then she will sit in his room and wait for him. The photographs will help. And if her father doesn’t come, she’ll just wait for him again the next day. She’ll wait every day, every night until he walks through the door.
And then what?
Justice. Or it all goes wrong. Or both.
She’s relieved that she didn’t have to kill her father tonight, even if she has to tomorrow. And the relief makes her angry with herself.
She steps outside, and Jake’s brows draw in a little when he sees her face. But he doesn’t say anything. He tosses the cigarette, and they take the subway. And then he says, “This is our stop.”
Eva looks up, frowning. “No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
She follows him out of the train and up to the street, confused. The lights are bright, the street loud, busy, like it’s daytime, and when they turn the corner, they’re in a square with more lights than she’s ever seen together in one place. Flashing advertisements for theater shows and newsreels, colas, cigarettes, and peanuts, the bulbs timed to make little moving pictures, like a cinema. There are so many people it’s hard to move. More sailors, soldiers, girls in lipstick. A juggler, and a man with a trained dog doing backward flips. Jake doesn’t spare any of it a glance. He grabs her hand, picking up the pace, edging their way through the crowd.
“Come on,” he says over the noise. “You need cheering up.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
They turn out of the busy square, onto a street that’s still jumping with noise. She’s trotting to keep up. And Jake says, “I’m going to teach you to dance.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I don’t want to know how to dance.”
“Yes,” he says. “You do.” They bolt across a street before the light changes, opening a door beneath an enormous sign that says CAFE ZANZIBAR.
It’s fancy inside, with mirrored walls and chrome rails and two enormous statues that are supposed to be Egyptian brushing at the ceiling. There’s a crush of people going in. Black ties, furs, and shimmering gowns in the glow of crystal chandeliers. Jake still has her by the hand, but now he’s whispering in the ear of the smartly dressed doorman, who’s greeting the guests and taking money.
Jacob Katz, Eva is learning, knows somebody everywhere.
The doorman glances at Eva and winks, then gives Jake a little nod of the chin. He just let them in. For free.
“Jake,” Eva says as he tugs her fast up the carpeted steps. “I am not … dressed.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You know what I mean to say.”
“Well, if you’re not, I’m not,” he says. And it’s true. He’s a mess. And he’s grinning. He can hear the band.
He steers her to one side, and they stop at a counter, a girl standing behind it inside a little room full of purses and hats. She has a red cap on her head.
“Jake, I can’t leave Brigit …”
“Brigit would be sleeping like a baby even if you hadn’t slipped her a mickey. Isn’t that what you said?”
She isn’t sure whether she said that or not.
Jake leans in. “You can’t really tell me that you could sleep right now.”
They’re standing almost as close as they had been in the closet, and through the open doorway beyond Jake’s shoulder, the lights are bright on the brass of swinging trumpets. She looks back at Jake and shakes her head.
“I didn’t think so. Leave your purse here. They give you a little card to pick it up with later.”
The girl behind the counter is chewing gum, watching this exchange with interest. Eva hands over the purse. Jake gives the girl a coin and slides the card into his pocket. Then he takes her hand again, and they walk into a wall of noise.
There’s a stage on one end with a full band, black curtain behind, and more mirrored walls, a bar in the back, and the people in the crowd are both white and every shade of brown. Though all the brown people, Eva sees, are at the tables along the balcony instead of on the floor. But everyone of any color is on the dance floor, writhing with rhythm in a way that is wild, frantic, the cigarette smoke rising like a fog in the lights.
Jake finds a stool at the bar where a man sits alone. “Hey!” he yells. “Give a lady a seat?”
The man grumbles, and Jake grabs her by the waist and pops her up onto the newly empty stool. “Are you thirsty?” he yells.
“I am not used to …” She waves at all the empty glasses, little umbrellas, half-drunk bottles of champagne.
“Booze?” Jake asks. “Good. Because I don’t have any money. Be right back!”
A girl passes by in a little red outfit like a bathing suit with stockings, a tray of cigarettes for sale hanging from a strap around her neck. The floor is so thick with dancers that the couples bump into one another. Then the crowd parts and a girl is sliding across the floor between the legs of her partner, only to be slid right back up again and into the air. A few of the other dancers whoop.
She wouldn’t mind being tossed around like that girl.
Jake has his elbows on the bar about halfway down, saying something to the bartender, and a man at the far end raises a whiskey glass to her. He’s round, bald, pale, sweating, and at least fifty, and must think she’s alone. She turns her back to him, and now the dancing girl is being twirled until her skirt flies up.
Jake comes back with two wet glasses of ice water. “I got him to put a cherry in yours,” he yells. “So, what do you think?”
“Hitler wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“The man was uptight.”
He downs the water in one. Eva eats her cherry. Jake holds out a hand. They leave the glasses and go to the edge of the dance floor, where they’re less likely to get banged into. Jake puts a hand on her waist, like they’re going to waltz, then leans down to whisper over the noise. “Start on the right. Forward, back, triple step to the side, triple to the side. Then the other way, okay?”
Twice through, and their feet start moving in sync. A few more times, and it’s almost automatic. Jake dips their hands up and down. But it’s nothing like the other dancers.
“Are you ready?” he says.
She doesn’t know.
“Okay, then! Double time!”
Suddenly, instead of four beats to a step, there’s only two. And now they’re bouncing, moving fast to the beat of the band. Eva laughs. “What dance is this?”
“Lindy,” he yells. “À la Jacob Katz. And … turn!” He takes the first step of each pattern in a different direction, and they travel through the crowd, making a pattern on the floor, crisscrossing all the dancers doing the same sort of thing.
The song changes, but the step still works. They find their beat and start again, and every now and then, instead of one of the triple steps, Jake lets go of her waist and spins her one time under his arm, grabbing her back in time to start it all over again.
“You didn’t tell me you were good at dancing!” he shouts.
She isn’t sure she is. But she’s laughing, dizzy with the heat and the lights that spin as they spin and the noise and the beat of the drums.
She’s like a girl who doesn’t remember the war.
She’s like someone she’s never met.
The music winds down, and now the beat is slow, and Jake changes their dance to match it. She’s against his chest, like she was before, his chin in her hair, their hands held together near her cheek. She doesn’t even know how she got there. She closes her eyes and the world is made of music. And movement. Of him.
The song changes. The band changes. One taking over straight from the other. The rhythm sways. They dance until Jake leans down and whispers, “Eva.”
She looks up. Blinking. They’re still dancing, but the room isn’t as loud, and no one is bumping against their shoulders.
“It’s three a.m.,” he whispers.
She nods, still in a trance, and he leads her off the floor, along a meandering path through the mostly empty tables. Jake hands the yawning girl in the red cap the little card, and they leave the club hand in hand, Eva swinging her purse as they walk down the clearing sidewalk.
Jake looks down at her and laughs. “You’re dance drunk.” His thumb rubs her knuckles.
