T. Boyle - The Women

“I want a beer — and a whiskey — in one of those speakeasies Al Capone shot up,” was the first thing she said to me after we’d checked into our very modest hotel, separately, in our separate rooms, though it sickened me to have to pay double for the sake of appearances. “I want to see the holes in the walls. I want to run this little finger”—she held up her index finger—“round one of those holes. Just for the thrill of it.”

“Sure,” I said, “me too. I can be a gangster and you can be my moll — do you want to be my moll?”

We were waiting for the elevator. There was no one around. I leaned in close and kissed her even before she slid her skirt up one leg to expose an imaginary garter and said “ Sí, certo, of course I’ll be your moll, signore, ” because we were like two kids playacting and I loved the way her eyes widened and her lips parted in expectation. We were in Chicago. We were free. And we had the whole afternoon and evening ahead of us, and two heady days beyond that.

I somehow got the notion that we should at least drive past the scene of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, which was on the north side, in the Lincoln Park area, and at that moment, truthfully, I’d forgotten all about Wrieto-San. Deep down, buried in some back room of my consciousness, I knew that he was somewhere out there in the confusion of pedestrians, streetcars, towering buildings and sun-striped boulevards, that he was very likely stopping at the Congress Hotel or paying a surprise visit to the Robie house or taking the air on Michigan Avenue, but I left the knowledge there. We climbed into the Cherokee-red Bearcat in the warm atomized sweetness of the late afternoon and let the breeze wash over us as I fought my way through the welter of cars and did my best to ignore the hooting horns and the double takes of one driver or another. The top was down. Of course it was down. It was summer. In Chicago. And we were out in the thick of it.

As I’ve said, I wasn’t much of a driver, and though I’d gained confidence on the backroads of Wisconsin, negotiating big-city traffic was another thing altogether. We were lost almost immediately — we never did find the St. Valentine’s garage or a tavern with holes in the walls, but we did manage a few beers in a bar and grill so murky and grime-encrusted it could have been the real thing. There were discolored flecks of some glutinous substance decorating the wall behind the table, which Daisy, lighting a cigarette in perfect nonchalance, claimed was blood but was more likely just catsup. Or marinara sauce, in keeping with the clientele. We ordered sandwiches, listened to the jukebox, kept our hands to ourselves. Nonetheless — I think we were on our third beer at the time — one of the patrons at the bar, who’d been speaking an animated Italian with his cronies, lurched over to our table and accused me of being a Chinaman, which I hotly denied. I didn’t like his face. I didn’t like his eyes. And things could have gotten violent very quickly if Daisy hadn’t taken hold of my arm and jerked me through the door and out onto the street as if I were a limp fish she’d caught on the end of a very taut line.

At any rate, the beers didn’t improve my sense of direction — or my sense of coordination with respect to gear shift, clutch and steering wheel, those essential tools of the road master — and we were lost on the way back too. I did manage to locate Lake Shore Drive and found a street heading west off of it that looked vaguely familiar even as Daisy insisted she’d never seen it before. It was then — and we weren’t quarreling, not really, though we were both, I think, frustrated by the endless detouring, backtracking, lurching and bucking, and eager to get back to the hotel — that I spotted Wrieto-San. We were stuck in a line of cars at a stoplight, the fall of day thickening the shadows in the alleyways, exhaust rising hellishly round us, and he was on the far side of the street, swaggering along in his usual way, twirling his walking stick, chatting with Mrs. Wright and a round-shouldered man in a gray suit who followed half a step behind. In that moment, Daisy saw him too. She let out an expostulation — or more of a squeak, actually — then ducked her head down beneath the dash, compressing her shoulders and pinching her knees together so tightly I was afraid she was going to burrow down through the floorboards and into the pavement beneath.

I held absolutely rigid, as if by freezing myself in space and time I could render myself invisible or at least inconspicuous — daylight was closing down and there were cars and people everywhere to provide cover — but then how inconspicuous could the only Japanese on the street hope to be? Especially as he was presented centerstage in a Stutz Bearcat automobile in the one shade of color most likely to attract the Master’s eye? Don’t ask. Because I wouldn’t want to have to answer the question myself. At any rate, the denouement had Wrieto-San and his party passing by, apparently oblivious, till he turned the corner and was gone.

I never had the courage to ask him if he’d seen me that day — seen us — even after the war when I came back to visit at Taliesin. He gave no sign of it when he and Mrs. Wright returned at the end of the week (and Daisy and I were hard at work on the upkeep of the place, taking our turns with the dishes and the hogs and all the other tasks the apprentices were assigned on a rotating schedule), but it was shortly thereafter that he strode into the drafting room one morning in his full regalia, beret, cape, jodhpurs and elevated shoes, and announced that he was leaving to inspect a building site in Wichita. “Wes,” he called out, “and, uh, Tadashi — I’ll need you to come along. Pack some things. We leave in five minutes.”

When we returned four days later, Daisy was nowhere to be found.

At first I didn’t understand — I went straight to her room, bursting with news of the trip, but no one answered my knock. Pushing the door open, I thrust my head in the room and saw, with a shock, that it had been stripped bare. Her books, her watercolors and hangings, her cosmetics, shoes, magazines and newspapers were gone — even the covers from her bed. Dumbfounded, I went to the wardrobe. There was nothing there but for one crumpled woolen sock in the back corner — and yes, I snatched it up and held it to my nose, desperate suddenly for the scent of her, thinking all the while that there must be some simple explanation, that she’d switched rooms, perhaps over to Hillside or even upstairs, where the views were more amenable. For all her cigarette smoking and urban tastes, Daisy loved the views down the long valley at Taliesin and on more than one occasion she’d told me how jealous she was of Gwendolyn because Gwendolyn had been assigned the room above hers, on the second floor.

I took the stairs two at time. It was late in the afternoon, windows open wide, ladybugs floating randomly up the stairwell, the sound of someone’s gramophone running a naked wire through the atmosphere (Borodin’s Second String Quartet, and I can never hear its sobbing strains without thinking of her, of Daisy, my Daisy, and the infinite sadness of that day). Gwendolyn was sprawled across her bed, still sweating from her exertions in the fields, and though I was so worked up I didn’t think to knock, she didn’t seem at all surprised to find me standing there in the doorway. “It was her father,” she said, without bothering to get up. “Mrs. Wright called him — that’s what everybody’s saying — and he showed up in some sort of fancy car, maybe a Duesenberg or something like that. I barely got to say two words to her, let alone goodbye.”

She was studying the look on my face as if she were a student of the human physiognomy, as if she were mentally measuring me for a marble bust. She’d never much liked me because I’d never much liked her. I tried to say something, but couldn’t seem to get the words out. “What,” she said, all innocence, “didn’t she tell you?”