Rodin's Debutante (3 page)

Tommy nodded at her and she was at his side at once, her arm through his. She said, Champagne? He said, You have champagne, I'll take whiskey. She stepped to the bar and returned bearing a tray with two glasses, an ice bucket, a bottle of champagne, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker. She indicated the stairs and preceded him to the second floor, where she paused. She asked Tommy if he would prefer the third-floor room, the best room in the house, most comfortable. It had been furnished by a client, a gentleman of the old world. Tommy said fine, it didn't matter to him. They continued up the stairs and through a soundproof door and into a spacious, dimly lit bedroom with three chairs, a sofa, a cocktail table, and the bed, appointed with red sheets and a white duvet and plump pillows. The furniture looked as if it had been assembled from the German-speaking world, Vienna or Berlin, bowed blond wood and steel, not a straight line anywhere you looked. The drawings on the wall were vaguely pornographic, big-haired women in corsets, their breasts exposed. Tommy was offended, he was no friend of the Hun, whether Austrian or German. The Kaiser was a scoundrel.

She said, Do you like it?

He said, I'll have to get used to it.

She poured a glass of whiskey for him and a glass of champagne for herself and gave her name as Claire, twenty-one going on twenty-two, working her way through the university seeking a degree in art history. Claire was well-spoken but nervous, perhaps daunted by Tommy's size and forbidding glower. Tommy, himself nearly thirty-five years old, guessed she was more like eighteen than twenty-one and perhaps younger than eighteen. He introduced himself as Tom Ogden, the closest he had ever come to assuming an alias. No one had ever called him anything but Tommy. They had one drink and another while, in a rare inquisitive moment, he asked her about herself. Was she one of the girls from a farm? No, she had never been on a farm. She came from downstate near Kankakee. Her father was a salesman but now he was gone, caught the flu and died, her mother too. Would you rather have a girl from a farm? No, Tommy said, I like you. Claire looked around the room and said it was her favorite. The client who furnished it was not her client but sometimes in the afternoon when it was quiet she and one of the other girls came up to listen to the phonograph and smoke.

Do you mind if I smoke? she asked.

Yes, Tommy said. I don't like tobacco.

Anyhow, Claire said, being in the third-floor room was like being in another world. It's far from Kankakee, Tommy said. No kidding, Claire replied. They sat quietly and then she began to describe her studies, utterly fascinating. Did he know that art authorities had drawn a direct line from Rembrandt to the French impressionists? Everybody steals from everybody else, Tommy said, and fifty years from now everyone will be stealing from the impressionists. Claire blushed and turned from him to hide her confusion. She giggled and admitted she knew nothing of art history. But the client who furnished this room had become a friend. He owned an art gallery and liked to talk about painters, how they were derivative of each other. Rembrandt was his specialty. Also, she went on, the university was a fiction. She was saving her money to buy a beauty parlor. She intended to return to Kankakee and open a beauty parlor, a place of her own where she was the boss. Later, telling the story, Claire said she had no idea what caused her to lie and then retract the lie. Probably she felt that Tom Ogden would find out somehow and be displeased. She had never met this Tom Ogden before and had no idea what he was capable of, but from the look of him he could break her neck with his bare hands. He had a tremendous stillness about him, as if there were no moving parts beneath his skin. He was very direct. Her own work had taught her to go slowly with clients and reveal nothing of her personal life. She had said Kankakee but actually her home was Moline and her late father was not a salesman but a druggist. Somehow Tom Ogden inspired trust, otherwise she would not have retracted her lie. He didn't seem to care, only asked her the name of the art dealer. When she hesitated he said to her that he had need of an art dealer, so she gave up the name. When Claire asked Tommy what he did for a living, his business, he said he didn't do anything for a living. He was not in business. He had no interest in business. She should not speak to him of business. He was a shooter, and when he saw the look of alarm in her eyes he sneered and assured her, not that kind. He shot animals. Pheasant, deer, duck, squirrel. Whatever animal was available. Elk. Tigers and lions. Elephant.

Sport, she said.

I suppose so, he replied.

Claire relaxed then and they undressed as if they had known each other for years. He was not rough at all, as she expected, but rather formal. He was limber for so large a man, and fit. The word for him was considerate and she was surprised at that. She could not say it was the most exciting evening of her life—there were few enough of those in any case—but she was not frightened, either. There was but one pause in the play that followed. Round about dawn Tom Ogden sat straight up in bed, turned his head, told Claire to shush, and put his palm to his ear in order to clearly hear the plaintive faraway sound of a train's whistle. Tom was silent a long moment and then began to laugh. When Claire asked him what was so funny he said that his father had paid them a call, first time he had heard from the old man in years and years.

What do you mean?

My father is dead, he said and made no further comment.

Tom Ogden did not leave Villa Siracusa until Sunday morning. Food and drink were brought to them. The arrangements were everything Bert Marks had promised and more. Claire was good-natured and willing. She never complained. Each morning around dawn Tommy heard the sound of the train's whistle, a signal of approval from his even-tempered father. And no wonder. Tommy was the happiest he had been and the amazement of it was the absence of complications. He made a date with Claire for the following Thursday, and the Thursday after that, and before long Thursday through Sunday was a permanent appointment unless Tommy was away shooting. A productive conversation with Herr Mackel, the owner of the gallery, transferred the lease of the third-floor room to Tommy; he became a silent partner in the Mackel Gallery, the better to display his sketches. He thought it time to move into the world a little bit, and Herr Mackel turned out to be a considerate German.

A year or so later, Villa Siracusa was raided by the sheriff's department, some question about the monthly stipend. After that was straightened out, federal agents arrived to close the place for good, a complaint about unpaid income taxes. The Siracusa family moved the business from its location north of Jesper to a more sympathetic jurisdiction but five years later there was more trouble from the county sheriff, who had been bought but refused to stay bought, a chronic problem in Illinois, though rarely in Chicago. At last, acknowledging defeat, the family returned to the big city, where the rules, once set, were scrupulously adhered to. Villa Siracusa—now Chez Siracusa—was established in a handsome brownstone on a tree-lined street on the South Side not far from the university. Once again Tommy was provided with a room of his own, furnished as before with a nice view: a private library of a scientific nature was situated across the street and over the rooftop of the library could be seen soaring church towers and the spires of the university and there was so little traffic you could believe you were in a small town downstate. Papa Siracusa himself assured Tommy that the trouble had gone away, vanished, because so many aldermen were clients. Chicago was a difficult environment, unforgiving, rough-edged. Costs were higher all around, he said, but there was peace of mind too, knowing that the rules, once set, were scrupulously adhered to. Tommy listened and concluded that the old man was losing his mind, believing he was back in Sicily. Rules endured only so long as they were convenient for everyone concerned, and when they ceased to be convenient they bent like giraffes in a hurricane. Watch yourself, Tommy, Bert Marks said, to which Tommy replied, Why should I? Susanna followed Claire, and Monica followed Susanna. Papa Siracusa died and was succeeded by his eldest son and everyone agreed that the apple had fallen far from the tree, the boy but a shadow of his father, a gentleman of the old school. The atmosphere Chez Siracusa became rowdier. One night a doctor was summoned to see to one of the girls who had become hysterical and on another night shots were fired and police actually entered the premises, weapons drawn. Tommy remained in his room on the top floor, well away from the unpleasantness, not that he cared.

He was a loner certainly and found repose Chez Siracusa. One of the girls compared Tom Ogden to a farm animal, content to remain at rest in a field chewing its cud until it felt hunger or some other manly urge. He would remain silent for hours at a time, deep in thought, often sketching—the roofline of the scientific library, the rooftops of the university high on the horizon, students in the street below, Claire, Monica, or Susanna reading or doing her toenails. The sketches were simple but took hours to complete because Tom was meticulous, never drawing a line until he had thought it out and the lines that would follow. He drew the way he shot, with patience and economy, and when he was finished he told the girls stories about his shooting adventures, the firearms he owned, and the correct manner to stalk game. Silence was the first trick, quick reaction the second. Third was composure, though surely composure was a function of silence. It's fair to say that the girls had never met anyone like Tom Ogden. Everything about him was a puzzle, including his courtesy in bed. He had only sporadic interest in knowing anything about them, and when Claire and Susanna moved on, he gave each girl a wad of money for whatever the future might bring. If asked, Tommy would have said that his happiest hours spent indoors were on the topmost floor of the brownstone, a view of the university rooftops beyond the scientific library across the street. In the autumn the colors were marvelous and in winter the roofs were stacked high with snow. Tommy had a massive lack of interest in the world around him, or that part of it unrelated to shooting, but he found consolation in the small-town feel of the South Side. Naturally he was most at home in the country, his firearms within easy reach, the fields always filled with game. He was never lonely in the great house with its forty-two rooms, listening to the echo of his footsteps wherever he went.

He supposed that at some point he would marry. Most men did. Probably he would marry if he could find a suitable woman, a woman who liked her privacy as much as he liked his. When he asked Susanna what she thought about marriage she misunderstood—she was so startled by the question that she was unable to speak for a full minute—and thought he was proposing to her. Susanna's eyes grew wide and tear-filled and when she threw her arms around him he was obliged to say, No, not you, marriage in general. Marriage as an institution. Her feelings were hurt but Tommy did not grasp that; hurt feelings, his own or anyone else's, were not in his arsenal of sentiments. Susanna, furious, her mouth drawn in a thin line, said that in fact she believed in marriage despite appearances. She had a fiancé and in due course she intended to marry the fiancé and settle up near the Wisconsin Dells where the fiancé had business prospects. They aimed to have three children. Tommy had ceased to listen. He half suspected that marriage was a chore in the way that his father had decided that business was a chore and had visited the psychic Madame Hauska who gave sound advice, and his father never worked again. His father swore by her, maintaining that she was a wizard with a balance sheet along with being a prophet. Surely she would be no less deft with matrimony.

Meanwhile, Tommy had iron-hearted Chicago, its fearless clamor, its no-nonsense way of going about things, its license, meaning contempt for civic virtue. He felt Chicago was a city with a curled lip and chips on both shoulders, a remark an infuriated schoolteacher once made about him. Tommy Ogden felt he knew Chicago in his bones; they were the same bones. At any event, for the remainder of his days he made the detested journey from his estate near Jesper to the South Side brownstone where he was most favored customer Chez Siracusa. He had furnished the top-floor room to his own taste—it had the leather quality of a shooting lodge—and caused a fireplace to be installed. In the heavy armoire below the mirror he kept shirts and a change of linen, pens and sketchpads and a revolver in the event of mischief. Everyone respected Tom Ogden. Never made trouble, never complained, paid handsomely, a perfect gentleman. All the girls liked him even as they tended to tune out his lectures, the monologues about shooting that went on for so many, many minutes. But he did not notice that, either, because he was not looking at them as he talked. He was deep inside himself, an inaccessible, perhaps barren, region to which only he possessed a map. It was always pleasant for Tommy to talk to someone who did not talk back.

THE CANDLES GUTTERED
. The Billingtons were on their feet, saying good night to Marie, such a lovely evening, we must do it again very soon. Sorry things got so out of hand, Susan Billington whispered to Marie, who only smiled and winked as if to say that the show was far from over. The worst was yet to come. Bert Marks yawned and touched Tommy's shoulder by way of farewell but Tommy did not respond except to nod in the direction of Bert's chair. Sit down a minute, Bert. I want you to hear this. Give me the benefit of your experience, let me know what you think about my plans. He did not look at the lawyer as he spoke, staring instead at the blank ceiling high above.

It's so damn late, Tommy—

Won't take long. Sit.

Bert returned wearily to his seat, knowing that he had one more hour at table. That was the minimum once Tommy got up a head of steam. Tommy's mind resembled a ponderous locomotive, the train of thought that went on for miles and miles, switchback following switchback with no end in sight. The Billingtons and the van Hornes—joined now by daughter Trish, yawning, a cigarette in her fingers until her mother told her to put it away, tobacco disallowed at Ogden Hall—took their seats once again. Why was dinner at the Ogdens' such a trial? It took so long to get there from the city and the way back was even longer.