Half World: A Novel (8 page)

24

They left the house early on Saturday mornings, dressing quietly and meeting in the kitchen. Henry drank his coffee and Hannah rushed through her cereal, anxious to leave before her mother and brother awoke. Standing in the doorway, arms folded, foot tapping, gestures she’d learned from impatient television wives.

They approached the bay through the surrounding neighborhoods, the sky beginning to lighten as they made their way down the hill, and then the bridge appeared, rising to fill the windshield, the long spans revealed, steel arms glinting in the sun.

They drove the lower deck, in the lane beside the trains. Every week Henry asked if Hannah wanted to drive all the way over, into the city, and every week she said no.

The bridge itself fascinated her. She rattled off information as they drove, things she’d learned in school, the height of the towers and length of the span and the time it had taken to build. It seemed like an ancient structure to her, something that had stood since an unimaginable past, but Henry was always struck by the facts, how quickly something so colossal had been constructed and its relative youth, only twice as old as Hannah.

She talked while he drove. This was more like the Hannah he knew. She had always been genial and outgoing, a member of the Brownie
Scouts, leader of a Polly Pigtail Club she had founded with a group of friends in Arlington. She had her mother’s self-assurance, making her a mystery to Henry in the same way that Ginnie was a mystery to him. Their ease in the world. But the move and the film had changed her, had made her wary and uncertain in ways that Henry understood.

She still woke two or three times a week, crying from nightmares about the bomb and the devastated city. On the nights that he was home he tried to reassure her, but it was becoming clear that there were no words convincing enough. So he tried something else, bringing her postcards from drugstores and newsstands, photos of Chinatown storefronts and Union Square hotels, seals sunning themselves on the piers. Evidence of normalcy in the city. Proof of life.

She preferred black-and-white postcards, which surprised him. He would have thought she’d find the color comforting, more like real life, but she felt the black-and-white images had an authenticity the others lacked. She studied the pictures in her bedroom, holding them for long silent moments, eyes moving slowly across the thin cardboard. She looked for the most mundane of images, rows of tidy houses, street signs, men loading a milk truck curbside. Moments so commonplace that they’d be impossible to fabricate, wouldn’t be worth constructing a lie around. When she found one, she thumbtacked the postcard to the wall with the others she’d selected. Then she stepped back and looked at the images, at the larger image the smaller ones created.

Into the tunnel, the sun and sky gone, suddenly. Hannah pointed across the tracks to the doorway-size openings in the far wall. Those are dead-man holes, she said. They’re for the gandy dancers. So rail workers can step in and disappear if a train is coming.

They never drove farther than Yerba Buena. Henry parked the car on the island so that it faced the bridge and they watched the sparse weekend traffic crossing between cities. Ginnie and Thomas would be up by now, having breakfast in the kitchen. Ginnie watching the clock on the stove, worrying. She had lost some of her confidence, too, since those last months in Washington. His uncertainty had made them all unsure.

Henry suggested that they take the train the following week, have
lunch on Market Street, ride a streetcar up the hill to see Oakland from the other side of the bay. He always suggested this, and Hannah always responded in the same way. Looking out at the towers in the fog, nodding, noncommittal, still unconvinced.

They drove home, back across the bridge. Hannah was quieter now. She looked out her window, pointing to dead-man holes, watching the railmen working on the sides of the tracks and then looking for a train. Wanting to see the system work, the safe escape. Waiting for the noise and the engine lights, for one of the men to step into a doorway and disappear.

25

Dorn is late and when he finally arrives at the south apartment he’s drunk.

“I don’t want to see that look, Hank. It’s been a bitch of a day.” He crosses to the breakfront bar, grabs the scotch. “I spent all afternoon in the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Dorn pours a drink, tosses it back. “My wife needed some tests.”

Henry’s ledger is open to a blank page. He checks his watch, writes the date and time. He almost writes the full name of the drug and then stops himself, inscribing the nickname instead.

Dorn says, “Any word from Emma?”

“Not yet.”

Dorn fills his flask, spilling scotch, cursing under his breath.

Henry says, “What kind of tests?”

Dorn takes a drink, screws the cap back onto his flask. “Not the good kind.”

He goes back outside to wait.

*   *   *

Henry checks his watch, looks up from the ledger to see Clarke on the other side of the mirror. Clarke is standing in the bedroom, almost per
fectly still, except for a slight turn at the waist. His eyes moving, trying to spot the equipment, the cameras and spike mics. Trying to see the room as the john will see it. Looking at the walls, the ceiling. He doesn’t look into the mirror because the mirror is obvious.

Clarke speaks softly,
Hello, hello.
Henry hears his voice in the headphones and knows who Clarke is, finally. He recognizes the voice, the psychiatrist at the back of the conference room in Washington, the man standing in shadow while the films of the captured soldiers played against the wall.

*   *   *

Noise on the stairs and then Dorn comes into the office, Clarke following close behind. They pull their chairs alongside Henry’s, facing the glass. They put on their headphones. Dorn starts to cough, pounds his chest. Henry and Clarke watch him as if they’re at a theater and the performance won’t begin until the noise subsides. Dorn passes his flask to Clarke and Clarke takes a long drink.

*   *   *

Front door, shoes in the living room. The sound of Emma pouring drinks in the kitchen. Henry pictures the eyedropper in her purse, now in her hand, the dropper uncapped, the liquid squeezed into the drink.

STORMY
.

Henry marks the time in his ledger.

*   *   *

Voices in the headphones.

This ain’t your apartment.

Me and a friend, Emma says.

Where’s your friend?

Out.

She coming back?

Not tonight.

Dorn sucks an antacid. The slight squeak of the circling tape reels is the only other sound in the office.

Emma says, I know you. Your name’s Lonnie, right? I’ve heard you play.

Where?

That club on Post Street.

Never played there.

I’ve heard you play. I remember your face.

You can’t see my face when I’m playing.

I remember it from when you lowered your horn. Another man playing. You were standing there waiting, watching him, bobbing your head. Holding your horn at your side. I remember your face.

You want money or dope?

We can talk about that later.

We can talk about that later. Who you trying to kid?

I want to hear you play.

I ain’t playing tonight.

You’ve got your horn.

I’ve always got my horn. But I haven’t played in a month.

I’ll just sit and listen.

Put on a record. We’ll listen to that.

I don’t want a record. I want to dance while you play.

I don’t play fast.

I don’t dance fast.

*   *   *

The sound of the horn in the headphones. Henry lowers the gain, looks to Dorn, worried about the noise. The neighbors across the alley calling the police, someone coming out to knock at the door.

Clarke takes off his headphones and cocks his head, listens to the music through the walls. “Body and Soul,” he whispers, and for some reason Henry writes this in the ledger.

*   *   *

Lonnie’s naked back to the mirror. Long, thick scars crossing his shoulder blades. Emma on her knees in front of him, invisible to the men in
the office. Lonnie’s head back, looking up at the ceiling fan, and Henry takes a picture.

Emma stops. Her face appears beside Lonnie’s waist.

What’s the matter, baby?

She stands and takes a step back and looks at Lonnie.

I can see the sky, he says.

How’s that?

The roof has curled back and I can see the sky. There. He points to the ceiling.

Maybe you should sit down.

Where’s my horn? He sits on the bed, still looking up.

Baby?

Where’s my horn? I have to play this.

*   *   *

The sound of Dorn clearing his throat and then he steps into frame, the view through the mirror. Lonnie still sitting on the bed looking up at the ceiling. The rest of the room of no interest to him. Emma stands from the bed, her long limbs, like a crane dipping when she bends to pick her dress off the floor. She backs out of the room.

Lonnie looks right at the camera hidden behind the ceiling fan and Henry takes a picture. The captured moment: Lonnie on the bed, Dorn inside the door, standing slightly hunched, some great beast arrived at the heart of the thing.

*   *   *

Lonnie.

No response.

Lonnie.

Who’s that?

Look over here.

Who’s that?

Over here.

Oh, Jesus.

Do you know who I am?

Oh, Jesus.

You know who I am?

I know. I know. I can see your eyes.

Henry removes his headphones, sets them on his desk during the screaming.

*   *   *

Many questions. Names, dates, who knows who, where can I find this man, who does this man know. Lonnie’s answers are meaningless. Bears, green, green, “St. James Infirmary.” As if he’s hearing different questions. As if he’s having another conversation somewhere else.

*   *   *

The two men circle the room, Lonnie stumbling backward, crawling over the bed, Dorn following, deliberate, until Lonnie has run out of corners and stands with his arms spread, his hands flat against the wall.

Lonnie touches every place on his skin where he’s struck and lifts his fingers to his nose, smiling as if smelling a flower.

*   *   *

The night passes. Lonnie and Dorn stand almost nose to nose, a half inch of air between them. Dorn frustrated, asking the same questions, and Lonnie only smiling in return, lips pulled back, his face stretched almost to a death mask. Henry takes a picture just before Lonnie touches Dorn’s nose with the tip of his own and Dorn rears back and brings his forehead down, cracking Lonnie open and sending him back to the wall.

*   *   *

“Found out nothing.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Found out a lot of fucking bullshit. How his name smells.” Dorn’s forehead open, knuckles open, blood on his unbuttoned shirt.

“You’re wrong.” Clarke standing in the bathroom doorframe holding a Dictaphone case, nearly manic with what he’s seen.

Henry and Dorn are cleaning Lonnie in the sink. His lips and nose are swollen. He’s asleep or unconscious or just quiet with his eyes closed.

“We need to keep him longer,” Clarke says.

“No.” Henry wiping blood from Lonnie’s split lips. Water running red in the sink.

“I need to observe him coming out of it,” Clarke says.

“He can’t be here when he comes out of it.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“No.”

“I have orders,” Clarke says.

“We’re cleaning him up and getting him out,” Henry says. “We don’t know what we have here.”

“I know what we have.” Clarke staring hard at Henry, then deciding something, switching focus to the recorder and microphone in his hands. “I need a place to talk.”

“The room beside the office,” Henry says.

“The bathroom?”

“The other room.”

“Can anyone hear me in there?”

“No one can hear you.”

Clarke leaves with his Dictaphone. Dorn pulls a towel from the back of the door, runs it over the top of his head, mopping sweat. Henry holds Lonnie alone, his face in the mirror beside Lonnie’s ruined reflection.

*   *   *

They leave Lonnie in an alley a few streets up from the wharves. Dorn has refilled his flask and is drinking hard while he steers the Lincoln, his nerves scraped raw from the night. When they return to Telegraph Hill, Clarke gets out of the car without a word, still clutching his Dictaphone. He walks toward his convertible, somewhere back in the fog. Henry watches him in the rearview mirror, disappearing into the mist.

“I’m sure you’ve followed him, too,” Dorn says.

Henry nods.

“He’s a risk,” Dorn says.

“He’s who we’ve been sent.”

“They’re problematic, queers. Easily compromised.”

“I’m aware.”

“They talk.”

“So do cops.”

Dorn takes another long pull from his flask, holding the metal lip between his front teeth. Henry steps out of the car, shuts the door behind him. Dorn pulls the Lincoln away from the curb.

*   *   *

He found Emma sitting on the sofa in the north living room, her knees up under her chin, her arms around her shins.

Henry said, “How long have you been here?”

“The whole time. You walked right by me when you dragged him out.” Emma rocking a little on the sofa, hugging her legs to her body. “What did I give him?”

“Nothing.”

“Is he dead?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“He won’t remember any of it.”

Henry stood in front of her, took out his wallet.

“Can I stay here?” she said.

“No.”

“Use the shower?”

“No.”

She took the money, folded it into her purse. Wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “What if I don’t come back?”

“Then Dorn will find you.”

Emma picked up her purse, stood.

Henry looked at his watch, crossed back to the front door.

“You can use the shower,” he said. “But don’t touch anything else.”