Two Moons (4 page)

“The
sign,
Mrs. May. Please read the sign!” Madam Costello reached over the windowsill and tapped the “by appointment only” board.

“No,” said Cynthia May. “Reading signs is
your
job. Can’t you let me in for one fast question?”

A different look lay upon the younger woman’s face today, nothing like the pinched and pawnbrokered aspect that had come to the door just a week ago. You’d have thought she’d found love
and
a legacy since then.

“Oh, come
in,
” said Mary Costello, trying to grumble, though secretly grateful for some company to take the edge off waiting for the visitor she was beginning to fear would never show.

Cynthia bustled up the steps. “I won’t even take tea,” she said. “I won’t even sit down.”

“Darlin’,” said Mary Costello. “You’re practically giggling. And if you commence to, I’m sure to start giggling meself.” She immediately proceeded to, prompted by her guest’s improved disposition and her own habit of snatching any sign of cheer, like a stick of firewood, to keep her spirits alight.

“My question is this,” said Cynthia May. “Does a person’s coloration tell you anything about him? The way his hair and eyes and flesh come into harmony, like an artist’s paints?”

Madam Costello looked puzzled, then disapproving. “I think you want one of the ancient humorists, dear, those that could tell you whether the look of someone’s face means a lot of blood or too much bile. I could never read anyone’s temper or future that way. Never thought of studyin’ the phrenology, either. All that muckin’ about on somebody’s scalp.” She affected a little shudder. “Long ago I had the chance to be a hairdresser, but I thought it a foul opportunity. Now, is this all about a feller?”

“New employment, actually,” said Cynthia. “Though a gentleman figures into it. If I knew his birthdate, I’d ask you something astrological. But I don’t.”

“Now, didn’t I tell you, seems like just the other day, you’d soon be in a new position!”

“You mentioned nothing of the kind,” said Cynthia.

“Well, I should have,” replied Madam Costello. “You looked as if you were needin’ one. You was nothing like the blooming creature before me.” She glanced over at the clock, only to see the scarf that covered it. “Now,
I’m
about to enter a new situation, too, missy. So you’ll have to be off.”

“A new client?”

Mary Costello laughed. “A new
patron,
let’s say.”

“Someone important.”

“Well, yes, but I mustn’t say more.”

Of course, she
did
say more, and started to say it within ten seconds, because she had never really had a patron before, certainly not
on the order of this one. Her excitement and her sympathy for this peculiar woman got the better of her resolve, kept these past four days, not to jinx the senator’s business by discussing him with anyone but Ra. She and Mrs. May were soon sitting at the consulting table, drinking the tea she’d planned on offering the man himself. As the clock ticked away under its veil, Mary Costello tried to drown the sound, along with her gathering doubts, by pouring out her whole life’s story. She chattered through her past at the same speed with which she took clients through their futures. Before Mrs. May was halfway through her cup, she knew the whole tale of Mary Costello’s departure from Cobh at the height of the famine. How, her first husband already dead, she’d arrived in the New World half starved and too ugly for the gamahucher that became the lot of half the girls with the strength to walk off the ship. How she’d cooked and sold papers at three different railway stations, until she arrived at the great western terminus of Chicago, where she found herself a second husband, a pork seller who made a pile, or at least a half of one, purveying meats to the soldiers at Camp Douglas. How he died of his own new wealth, carried off by the flux that entered his fat body with the drinking water from the river, dark as gravy some days, running with all the unsalable bits beaten out of the poor animals you could hear and smell dying every hour.

From then on she’d worked in saloons, the best of them the Hankinses’ gambling house, and never complained about her shack near Hair Trigger, tar and felt being a grand sight better than the thatch in Galway she could still recall. Of course, even tar and felt couldn’t survive the Fire; but
she
did, spending the nights in Lincoln Park and getting her first good laugh since the flames started when the
Tribune’
s editorial—“
CHEER UP
”—blew past her feet. That she could read it at all was thanks to her first husband, bless his soul, who had taught her, letter by letter and word by word, before the blight took their whole green world.

He had a sister who’d ended up in Washington, and Mary had, by some miracle, through every disaster and displacement on the twenty years’ journey, stayed in touch with her. It was she who got Mary here
and on her feet, explaining that this city was every bit as much about the making of money as Chicago. And so, six years later, Mary sat in this parlor with her little business that did tolerably well but could surely use the munificence of a grand fellow like the senator, and—oh, why ever was she telling the girl all this?

“You left out Mlle. Lenormand,” said Cynthia.

“So I did,” said Madam Costello. “And much else besides.” She read Mrs. May’s quick expression, and could see that she understood there never was a Mlle. Lenormand; and then the two women laughed together.

“May I offer you this?” asked Cynthia. It was the
Life of Franklin Pierce,
which she extracted from her pocket and slid across the table. “It’s worth ten dollars, I guarantee.”

“And why would you be offerin’ it?”

“Because I want you to read the planets for me. All spring and summer, whenever I want to come, though I’ll take care not to arrive when your important customer is on the premises.”

“Now, miss,” said Mary Costello, her face falling from fear that the man was never coming around again. “Since you know there was no Mlle. Lenormand for me to be a disciple of, why would you still be wanting me to look into the stars for you?”

“Who is to say that what you know, however you know it, isn’t so? Maybe whoever
did
teach you truly knew a thing or two.”

“Oh, Iris Cummings knew a thing or two, that’s for sure!” said Mary Costello. “All you had to see was the look on Big Jim Gunn just after he’d been with her!” Her loud laughter made Ra turn his head. “Ah, miss, I don’t know,” she sighed, opening up Mrs. May’s book to see the signatures of subject and author. “Well, Jaysus Mary. This would be the one that was President?” She pointed to the black ink, thinking how much this might have impressed the senator if only he’d kept his word and come. In any case, ten dollars was nothing to be sneezed—

“Almighty!” cried Mary Costello, as the doorbell rang. She and
Cynthia jumped from their seats. “All right, missy, readings through the summer whenever you like, though right now you’re to be off with yourself. Immediately!”

Cynthia had gone to lean out the open window and see just who was on the steps. He must be six foot three, she thought, resisting Madam Costello’s tug at her waist. The single curl that fell halfway down his brow, the beard that jutted to a sharp point: both had as much gray in them as gold, enough to make her suppose that this fine-looking man—growing impatient, she could see—might be closer to fifty than forty. But for all that—“Oh,
no!
” she cried at her sudden realization. “It’s
Conkling
!” She took care to whisper the identification as she spun around and looked at Madam Costello. “You slyboots.”

There was no amusement, no female conspiracy, in the astrologer’s expression. She wanted Mrs. May out
now,
and Mrs. May knew it. So Cynthia gathered her skirts and headed for the door, one step ahead of the lady of the house. But when she got her hand on the doorknob, she turned around to say: “He’s just as one of the other boarders described him. Joan Park sat in the ladies’ gallery for half his speech, the one that finally settled the election. She nearly drooled the details of his appearance to all of us at supper.”

Cynthia opened the door. Roscoe Conkling—who had spent an active amatory life hoping never to be surprised by a second woman in any room where he had arranged to meet but one—drew back, though only for a moment.

He stared at her, then tipped his hat.

“I was just leaving,” said Cynthia.

His entrance into the parlor prevented that. He crossed the threshold and came forward like a wave, forcing her to step backward. Madam Costello rushed to take his hat and gloves.

“What a shame,” said Conkling, ignoring the astrologer to look straight at her previous client. “Are you off to meet your fortune?”

“I met it earlier this afternoon. At least that’s what I hope,” said
Cynthia, who began moving toward the door. “I think you’ll hear the spheres playing a wonderful tune today.”

“Then I can trust her to set them in the proper motion?” he asked, pointing to the planet reader.

Cynthia just smiled and took a step forward.

“Here we go, sir,” said Mary Costello, urging the senator into the parlor with a sweep of her hand.

Conkling continued to stare at Cynthia. He yielded no ground, forcing the younger woman to walk around him in order to exit.

She descended the steps to the street, not daring to look back, and only after what seemed a long time did she hear the door shut.

Out on the sidewalk, just a few paces away from the house, stood a young man with thick spectacles and a waistcoat shiny from wear. “Excuse me,” he asked her, with as much abruptness as apology, as if he had long since learned to be unembarrassed when accosting strangers. “The gentleman you were speaking to: that was Conkling, wasn’t it?”

Alarmed by the sheer need and avidity in the man’s gaunt face, Cynthia replied: “He never gave me his name.”

“I know it’s him,” said the young man, starting a great rush of words. “I’ve been following him for two blocks. I need a job, you see. I’ve knocked on every undersecretary’s door and come up with nothing. I’ve been waiting for some help from fate. I know that’s what it takes, and I’ll bet this is it. Do you know how long he’ll be inside there? Do you think he’ll speak to me when he comes out?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Cynthia, in response to both questions. She wanted to calm the man, to ask him who he was and how he’d come to the District, but she couldn’t make herself do it. He was too desperate a version of herself; their very kinship made her want to get away. He was the sort of person she was
ceasing
to be, and he felt like bad luck. How fortunate she felt to have her own hopes depending on the lovely Mr. Hugh Allison instead of the great “Lord Roscoe.”

The young man went on talking. “I’m going to wait at the bottom of
those steps.” For the moment, though, he allowed himself to lean against the lamppost. Cynthia could tell he’d not had much to eat of late. “I’ve been here for a month and a half,” he explained. “And never imagined it would be so confusing—nobody knowing which party was about to take over, nobody listening to anyone else. But everyone listens to
him,
” he said, pointing to the house containing Conkling. “Isn’t that so? Isn’t that what they all say? If he could only steer me in the right direction, I know I’d be able to do the rest. All I need—”

The young man fell suddenly silent, dumbstruck by what he’d just noticed at the parlor window. Cynthia looked over her shoulder to see what it might be.

Framed between the musty swags of curtain, Roscoe Conkling calmly glared at the sidewalk; behind him and to the side stood the astrologer, still helplessly holding his gloves and hat.

After a few seconds, the senator raised his hand, pointed to the young man, and with a slash of his index finger indicated that he was to be off, immediately. The threadbare fellow raced across the street and out of sight, as if he’d been hit with a stick. Cynthia, sickened with inert sympathy, watched his terrified dash before looking back toward the window, where Roscoe Conkling stared at her for a few long last seconds, and then nodded twice, as if saying yes to something, for both of them.

“Tell him that I want him. Now.”

Roscoe Conkling hit the punching bag with his bare fist. The stunned leather rattled its metal stanchion, and the Arlington Hotel’s bellboy cried “Yes, sir!” before taking off in search of the fellow who ran errands for the residents.

Stripped to the waist, Conkling resumed his workout, refusing to take a bite of his boiled fish and spinach, or even a sip of soda water, until he had given the bag two hundred jabs. His colleagues might be
over at Wormley’s, bloating themselves on venison and hock, but at forty-seven, he remained as lean as when he’d entered the Senate ten years ago, and he was determined not to put on a pound or an inch in the ten years to come.

If he could stand it here that long. Ten years
already,
and no higher? It wasn’t Hayes’s going to the White House that bothered him so much. Better that the stolid old Buckeye, still full of holes from the war, had gotten the nomination than James G. Blaine, Conkling’s chief rival for mastery of rhetoric and the Republican party, who for years had mocked his looks and strut. No, he thought, breaking the first bit of skin on his knuckles tonight, the problem wasn’t even Blaine. It was Evarts, the New York lawyer just named Secretary of State. What a brazen reward it appeared! Nominating the man who’d argued and won the President’s case before the Electoral Commission! A commission that Roscoe Conkling had created, to decide the disputed election and keep the Republic—already by December bristling with Democratic and Republican militias—from yet again rending itself in two.