Page 44

TEN

H ave you ever heard a fire alarm on a subway train? Eddie hadn’t, either, so when the screeching bell wakes him from his train-nap, he leaps to his feet. He and the other passengers look around, frightened, as the train pulls into the Canal Street station. They push at one another as the doors open, shouting in panic, desperate to get off the potential death trap. Eddie’s caught in the crush, pushed out onto the platform. He races with the others toward the Exit sign.

“Don’t worry,” Francis says, suddenly at Eddie’s arm as they sprint up the stairs and out onto the street. “There’s no fire. But I had to wake you up somehow. We have a ball to get to.”

“You could get arrested for that,” Eddie says.

“Not if they can’t catch me,” Francis says.

It’s dark out here, so it takes Eddie a minute to recognize where they are, and when they are. The old cars, the old taxis, the horses and elevated trains and billboards advertising tobacco and coffee and Broadway shows like Girl Crazy and Whoopee! tell him: They are back in 1930. Eddie’s in his scuffed boots, Francis in his newsboy cap.

But it’s nighttime, and Eddie is worried about Cookie. “What time is it?” he asks, looking uptown, toward Cookie’s neighborhood.

“Don’t worry about time, remember?”

“But—”

Francis touches Eddie’s cheek.

“Have I ever lied to you?” he asks, and in another mouth the words would sound loaded, even sinister. But in Francis’s warm, careful voice, they sound like a safety net, a seat belt, a hand pointing the direction.

They walk along Canal Street, past Broadway, and up through Little Italy to Eldridge Street. They hear so many languages as they cross this part of Manhattan: Chinese, Polish, German, Portuguese, Greek. Francis knows how to say hello in most of them, greeting street vendors and shopkeepers as they go. “Ni hao! Witam! Guten Abend! Ola! Yia sou!”

“Don’t be fooled,” Francis says. “I can’t really speak any of these languages. A little German maybe, a few words in Italian. But it helps, especially down here, to know a word or two. You never can tell where the next person you meet will be from. That’s New York, you know? Ah, here we are.”

They stop outside a large stone building with an arched doorway, flanked on both sides by tenement stacks. It looks grand but deserted.

“Really?” Eddie asks, skeptical. He’s not sure what he expected, maybe a red carpet or a marquee or something to indicate there was a big event happening inside. But the street out front is quiet.

“Dull outside, dazzling inside,” Francis says. “New York is a city of hidden depths, you know. Kind of like some people I know.” He elbows Eddie in the ribs.

Eddie stiffens at the implication, the idea that Francis can see something inside him. It’s the thing he’s worked so hard at, to keep what’s inside hidden, camouflaged. But after a breath, he relaxes. This is Francis. This is 1930. You’re okay here. Be braver.

“Dull?” he flirts, reconjuring the feeling of being in the water. He takes a step back and spreads his arms to show off his outfit, just a simple black jacket and trousers. “You call this dull?”

Francis laughs. “Don’t worry, you look perfect,” he says, sweeping the dust from Eddie’s shoulders. “You don’t want to look like you’re too rich, you know? We all hate rich people these days, and they don’t know how to have a good time anyway. Besides, wearing all black is a favor to the queens. We look dull so they shine brighter. We’re guests, not brides. Know what I mean?”

“If you say so,” Eddie says.

“I do.” Francis tugs at Eddie’s jacket hem and straightens the lapel. “There. Look at you. You’ll be the handsomest boy at the ball.”

Eddie doubts it. He’s not even the most handsome boy standing here on this sidewalk. Not next to Francis, anyway. He steps toward the arched doorway, but Francis stops him.

“No, this one,” he says, pointing at another, smaller door off to the side. He guides Eddie inside, and then through a second door, and then into a lobby with faded red carpeting on the wall. “Keep going,” he says, nudging Eddie toward a green curtain at the far end of the room.

Francis pulls back the curtain, and together they step into the vast ballroom, crowded with people. The ceiling towers over them, two or three stories high, with a giant chandelier in the exact middle of the room, hanging over a swing band playing, would you believe it, Cole Porter. They play vigorously, music bouncing through the air, as a man with a raspy voice sings in syncopation: Let’s fly away / And find a land that’s warm .

Laughter pierces through the room, mingling with the music as Eddie takes in the scene. There are a hundred, maybe two hundred couples dancing around the band, men in tuxedos dancing with drag queens in stoles, women in tuxedos dancing with women in shifts, young men in ragged suits dancing with other young men. Eddie watches them spin and laugh.

“Is everyone here—” he whispers.

“Yup,” Francis says, not needing the rest of Eddie’s question to answer with confidence. “Everyone.”

They do a lap around the room, Francis leading the way. He seems to know everyone here. He points and nods as he goes, saying hello to this one, giving a peck on the cheek to that one. They all look Eddie up and down, some smiling warmly, some squinting suspiciously, others quickly averting their eyes. Kind of like in real life. (Is this real?)

Francis grabs Eddie’s hand and pulls him off to the side of the room, where a bench lines the wall. He climbs up onto it, standing a head above everyone else, then helps Eddie up beside him. From here, they can see the whole room. The crowd seems even bigger from above, swinging tails and sweeping gowns in the center, more modestly dressed partygoers (like Francis and Eddie), mostly in black, around the edges.

“It’s almost time,” he says.

“For what?”

“You’ll see.”

There’s barely enough room here on this riser for two sets of feet, so Francis stands behind Eddie and wraps his arm around Eddie’s chest. He’s so close Eddie can feel his breath on his earlobe, and in his mind, Eddie flashes back to the patisserie, where Theo stood behind Eddie just like this. That was only a day or two ago, wasn’t it? (What is a day anymore?)

Across the crowd, standing in front of a door adjacent to the one Eddie and Francis entered, a woman in a sharply tailored tuxedo, her hair slicked back and a razor-thin mustache penciled over her lip, cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “Let the parade begin!”

The door opens, and a very tall person in a flowing lavender gown and towering powdered wig enters, snaps open a fan, looks around at the crowd, and begins to walk. Another, in a red dress with a black lace shawl, follows. Then another, in gold sequins to the floor, and another, in a white halter dress with camellias pinned across the bust. One after another follows, and soon there are ten, twenty, fifty, more, an endless pageant of colors and sequins and turbans and boas and tiaras and corsets and capes. Eddie is astonished by the spectacle, stunned by the confidence in their walks and the complexity of their looks. Their spidery eyelashes and apple cheeks, Cupid’s-bow mouths and kohl-drawn brows. Eddie wants to take a photograph for Cookie, because he knows how she’d clasp her hands in delight to see the display, but he doesn’t dare. He won’t tempt that particular fate. He doesn’t want to be sent back to the twenty-first century, not yet. Not yet.

“The pansy parade,” Francis whispers. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

They watch a queen pass in an orange cape trimmed with feathers that slide across the floor behind her. Another balancing a towering headdress of paper flowers, calla lilies and gladioli. Another in a dramatic, villainesque black column with wide, squared-off shoulders and crimson-stained lips. He sees a Mae West look-alike with a cinched waist and a sprawling Victorian hat. He sees a queen that looks just like Greta Garbo, in a deep blue gown with an open back. Another who looks like Louise Brooks, with a severe black bob and ingenue eyebrows.

“See that one in the green?” Francis asks, pointing. Eddie squints, following Francis’s outstretched finger. He sees a queen in an emerald satin sheath clutching a white shrug around her shoulders, platinum ringlets of hair piled high and secured with a tiara. She drags a long strand of pearls behind her, feigning a look of aloofness. She looks like a movie star, untouchable, but as she approaches, the now-familiar features come into focus.

“Is it?” Eddie asks. “Is that—”

“Yes,” Francis says. “Carlotta.” It is Carlotta—Charlie—and she tips her head in acknowledgment, an elegant gesture as she passes, tapping Eddie on the shoulder with one gloved finger and winking coquettishly. She is beautiful.

“Goddess!” Francis shouts. “You are Jean Harlow! You are dee-vine!”

Carlotta smiles and saunters on.

“Wait till you see Gabby,” Francis says.

And then there she is. Gabby—Gabriel—in a blindingly white cape that falls all the way to the floor, her hair a haystack, powdered white. Her cheeks are rouged a shocking red, her eyes lined with green and gold, and she’s dabbed a beauty mark on one cheek.

“Gabrielllllla!” Francis shouts, drawing out the L s with so much enthusiasm his voice cracks. “You are Marie Antoinette! You are Norma Shearer! You are chosen!”

Gabby waves regally, palm facing inward as if she really is a queen. And she is followed by another queen, and another, and another. By now dozens of beautifully turned-out queens are winding through the crowd, whoops and cheers of the spectators echoing off the walls.

“One more round, ladies,” the tuxedoed woman says, gesturing with her rhinestone-encrusted walking stick toward the front of the room. “And please don’t rush. Let us admire you. Let us be overcome by your femininity. Let us bathe in the extravagance of your beauty.”

Eddie is dazzled. He’s never seen anything like this, certainly not in real life, and never in his fantasies. He doubts he could even conjure such an elaborate, colorful, creative vision. Hats, boas, big-shouldered gowns, flowing robes, intricate kimonos, corseted bodices. Red lips, tinted eyelids, pomaded curls, brows dusted with glittery mica powder. He cheers for their honesty, their bravery, their belief in themselves. Here they are, proudly sweeping through a room of admirers, forgetting (or maybe just setting aside) for the briefest moments just how impossible this should be, how impossible it is—except here. Here, in this ballroom, in the safe embrace of one another, they can open up their colors. Eddie cheers for them. He wishes it would never end.

But eventually, it does. After the parade participants have circled the room twice, and gathered to pose in the front, and after several ovations from the onlookers, the queens begin to mingle with their admirers. Francis loosens his grip on Eddie’s chest and hops down to the floor, where they wander among the queens, admiring their outfits.

“Isn’t it something?” Francis asks. “Seems like there’s a ball every week somewhere in the city. And in Chicago, Boston, Berlin, Paris. All around the world.”

“Have you been to those cities?” Eddie asks.

“Some of them,” Francis says.

He plucks two glasses off the tray of a passing waiter and hands one to Eddie. The seltzer is different this time, flavored with mint and licorice, a compelling combination that lingers on Eddie’s palate. “Delicious,” he says.

“Drink up,” Francis says, holding out his hand. “Because now, we dance.”

And they do. They dance. They spin and jump and swing and Francis wraps his arms around Eddie and flings him into the air and catches him again, and Eddie sings aloud, not knowing the words to the songs but not caring, and he knows they won’t stop until the sweat soaks through their shirts and their legs wobble beneath them. Oh, let this moment last. Let this ball go on forever. Don’t send me back to the real world, to the other world, to my world. I want this world now. Not that one. Francis’s world. Not mine. He dances faster.

Eventually the music softens to something slower. Eddie stands in front of Francis, breathing hard, sweat dripping from the ends of his hair. He pulls at his shirt, laughing. “I’m soaking wet!”

Francis reaches for Eddie. “So am I,” he says, wrapping his arm around Eddie’s waist and pulling him closer as the singer starts to croon: You do something to me .

“Cole Porter,” Eddie says.

“Our best,” Francis says. “Timeless. Even a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, he’ll still be our best.”

“How can you know that?”

Francis pulls Eddie’s head into his shoulder, where it fits perfectly, like a missing piece. “Timeless is timeless,” Francis says. “We are timeless, too.”

They sway through the slow song, Francis’s hands around Eddie’s waist, Eddie’s lips pressed against Francis’s neck, tasting the salt of his sweat.

When the song ends, the other partygoers—the fairies and the pansies and the queens and the queers—all start to shuffle off the floor to gather their things and head for home. But not Eddie and Francis. They stay where they are, swaying, connected, blissful, until the tuxedoed woman shouts, “Good night!” and the lights overhead burst into illumination, shocking the hall with a sudden, blinding, explosive flash.