Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

He passed several men — metal nails in their mouths, hammers in their hands — boarding up yet another building. The economy had soured since the crash and factories around Wooster Square were folding like poker hands. Without work, people were running out of money. The row houses along the street, once grand and stately, showed a hundred signs of neglect: chipped paint, sagging porches, missing shutters, sunken roofs. Fifty years ago they’d been opulent single-family homes for the rich; now they were overcrowded rooming houses for the broke.

Still, the young man saw signs of resilience and self-sufficiency too. He passed household vegetable gardens and chicken coops. He passed bakeries, meat markets, and pastry shops still holding on. The unemployed were turning their houses into makeshift shops, leaving their windows open so that the delicious smells of their cooking would lure passersby. More than once, the man had stopped impulsively to buy tomato pies or rich, sweet pastiera. If his mother were still alive, she would be shocked. Her Irish son eating Italian food.

A few minutes later he reached his workplace, a hulking brick building called Strouse Adler — one of the few factories in Wooster Square that was still turning a profit. He went in the front entrance, noting a drunk loitering near the door. No doubt he was there to leer at the female workers who flooded the main entrance at 8:15 every morning. Mr. Russo, the boss, was strict about punctuality. He threw on the power switch at exactly 8:30, and God help anyone who was late.

The man maneuvered through the corridors, nodding curtly at passing seamstresses and bundle girls. His room was on the second floor. A year ago he’d been hired by Mr. Russo to be the company’s chief advertising artist. He drew portraits of girls modeling Strouse Adler’s products: corsets, mostly. His drawings were published in newspaper advertisements throughout the country, although he was never credited. Mr. Russo was a stickler for discretion too.

The man put a sketchbook on his easel and sharpened the dull ends of his lead pencils. Today he would be drawing a model wearing a “Smoothie,” one of Strouse Adler’s most popular corsets. It was constructed with a newfangled material, latex, which was nothing like the thick, coarse cloth of the past. Modern women seemed to love the flaw-disguising stretchiness of latex. Mr. Russo loved it too, because of the savings. Only a little material was needed for each corset, compared to the eight yards of yesteryear.

After the metal sewing machines whirred to life on the floor below, his first model sashayed in. Antonia Colavolpe. She and her younger sister Cecilia were frequent subjects in Strouse Adler’s advertising. Although both girls were beautiful, they were not the kind of models Mr. Russo typically employed. As a rule, he didn’t hire local girls.

“Italian fathers can be a nightmare,” he’d once confided. “And none of them want their daughters posing in underwear.”

Even so, the Colavolpe sisters, with their natural eighteen-inch waists, had been too good to pass up.

Antonia shut the door behind her. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully, tossing back dark, pin-curled hair. Behind a partition in the corner of the room, she took off her clothes and put on the corset that awaited her. “Will you be finished by noon, Lewis? I have to be somewhere.” She poked out her head and winked at him. “Secret rendezvous.”

Lewis knew most fellas would find her irresistible: her boldness and bright red lipstick. But he bristled when she used his first name. It breached a professional distance he tried to maintain. “We should be done by then,” he replied.

“Thanks. Oh gracious — this one’s divine.”

She stepped out from behind the screen and ran her fingers along silky paneling and lacy, beribboned trim. The corset fit her like a second skin.

“Hands at your sides, please,” he instructed. “Tilt your head a little and cock your right hip. Just a couple inches.”

He sketched her for about twenty minutes as she chatted merrily about the possibility of seeing a double feature on Friday night. Or maybe finding a new beau. She was too blithe and animated for his taste, but at least she kept her body still. That was all Lewis really cared about.

“Any plans for this weekend?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her right away. “Nothing very interesting, I’m afraid.”

“Really, you can be such a wet blanket, Lewis.”

He ignored that and began to draw the contours of a face. Not Antonia’s face, though. He never drew the real faces of his models. Because Mr. Russo demanded absolute discretion, yes, but also because Lewis preferred his drawings to be anonymous. He liked to imagine the heads separate from the bodies. That way, when he sketched a sweet, wholesome face, he didn’t have to worry about it contradicting the bombshell body to which it was attached.

“I’d let you take me out,” she said coyly. “So that when someone asks you what you did on Saturday night, you’d have something to say. Would you like that, Lewis?”

He stared at the paper and licked the tip of his pencil. “Miss Colavolpe, I’d like it if you stopped talking.”

After Antonia had gone, he headed for the kitchenette, a room of sea-green walls and checkerboard floor tiles that was reserved for management. But being a favorite of Mrs. Russo, he was allowed access.

Lewis couldn’t quite remember when or how their routine had started. At some point, Mrs. Russo had decided to pack him a lunch. Now she did it every day. The two always met at noon — sharp — and ate together.

Today the plate that awaited him was spaghetti with anchovies and fennel. Mrs. Russo always cooked Italian food, although she — like Lewis — was not Italian. She’d learned the recipes, she said, to satisfy her husband.

She smiled warmly when Lewis joined her at the table.

“Thank you, Mrs. Russo,” he said. “This looks divine.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Doris.”

“Thank you, Doris.”

Mrs. Russo’s own meal remained untouched. She was too busy sewing to eat. In her fingers were pattern pieces for a new corset. She liked to make original designs with unusual fabrics and hardware. Sometimes her work even made it into production. Out of everyone at Strouse Adler, Mrs. Russo probably knew the most about corsets, which was ironic since Lewis had never seen her wear one. She was a big-boned woman, thick in the rear and middle in particular. Yet she moved about self-confidently, unbothered by the fleshy rolls that Strouse Adler deemed the enemy.

“What’s this one going to be like?” he asked her.

“Different. Modern,” she replied. When he raised an eyebrow, she laughed. “Don’t look so alarmed. It’s not the second coming of the electric corset.”

He laughed too. It was a running joke between them: how Strouse Adler had once deigned to manufacture Dr. Scott’s electric corset, which had promised to cure everything from paralysis to impaired circulation. An electric corset: quackery at its finest.

“Who was the model this morning?” she asked as she stitched.

“Miss Colavolpe. The older one.”

“You mean the greedy one. Do you know she had the nerve to ask me for more money? She makes four times what our seamstresses make — and I have to hold back their raises. Again.”

“You and Mr. Russo are very generous to the models.”

“Too generous. I told that Antonia, No sirree , and that if she doesn’t stop sweeping through the front entrance like Hedy Lamarr, she won’t have a job at all. She’s attracting too much attention. But I think she likes that.”

He nodded, and she sniffed in satisfaction. Lewis felt an ease with Mrs. Russo that he didn’t feel with anyone else at work. Or anyone else in his life, really. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he was not only the Russos’ employee, but also their tenant. A few blocks away, he rented the basement apartment of their brownstone. He had a separate entrance, and thus, privacy and independence. Even so, his life felt tethered to theirs.