Mark Dunn - We Five

Pat smiled. “Swell.”

Molly glanced over her shoulder in the direction from which they’d come. A shadow of worry crossed her face. “Gee, I hope he’s all right.”

“You hope who’s all right?”

“The man at the baths who went down the slide and didn’t pop up again. They really should be more careful.”

“Accidents happen, I suppose. Some people just have the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I’d like to tell you something, something I haven’t told a single soul — not even my father. I want him to think I’m brave and strong, but sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I worry dreadfully about things.”

“What are you worrying about right now, Miss Osborne?”

“It’s a silly thing, really, and I shouldn’t have done it, but there’s a woman in my neighborhood — she lives up the street from my father and me — a Mrs. Froda. She and her husband run a confectionery. Well, they used to. They just moved back east. To New York. That’s where her husband’s from. We’ve become friends over the last few years — Mrs. Froda and me — and I agreed to help her pack up her things in exchange for some candy. I do love candy, and I suspected she had great lashings to give away before she and Mr. Froda shuttered up their shop.”

Pat grinned. “And did you get candy?”

A smile peeped out from Molly’s worry-darkened countenance. “Boxes of chocolates and caramels and nougats and bags of lemon drops and candied cranberries and orange slices. My father took one look at all my loot and accused me of planning to drum up business for him by distributing free candy to all the children of Polk Street!”

“Your father must be a dentist,” laughed Pat.

Molly nodded. She stopped walking and dipped her head. Pat stopped as well. “I had the opportunity to ask her about their move while we were packing things into boxes — she remarked how good I was and I said this is exactly what I’d been doing for the last six months at Pemberton, Day, which, thankfully, I’ll not have to do again, thanks to my promotion — I asked her why she and her husband were leaving San Francisco. You see, they had been doing quite well with the confectionery, and it didn’t make a great deal of sense to me why they’d want to go.”

“And the look on your face, Miss Osborne — it tells me the reason for their leaving is the thing that’s upsetting you.”

“Of course, I shouldn’t be upset by it. It’s really quite silly. Mrs. Froda doesn’t think it’s silly, obviously, but I do. And Mr. Froda takes his wife seriously — seriously enough, in fact, to go along with her wishes.”

“You’ve now got me quite curious, Miss Osborne. You’ll have to tell me.”

“I intend to. There’s the tamale man, and I’m suddenly famished. It’s about dreams, Mr. Harrison. Terrible, frightening dreams. She’s been having them nearly every night for quite some time.”

“The same dreams or different ones?”

“The same. Always the same. About — about the end of the world. Well, at least the end of San Francisco.”

“Earthquake? Fire? Some comet shooting down from the sky?”

Molly shrugged. “She doesn’t know the agent. She only knows the outcome. And it makes her wake up each night in a cold sweat. Two tamales, if you please. I’m very hungry.”

Zenith, Winnemac, July 1923

Bella’s birthday bash was in full swing, but for the present, Molly Osborne and Pat Harrison had chosen to limit their own swinging to the gentle and decidedly more intimate sway of the Prowse porch swing.

“And how is it you can just stand there and and lissem to all that ma — larkey?”

“I can’t pull myself away. She’s right there on that street corner every day — ruh — right in front of Sister Lydia’s new tabernacle. If you squa — squint and stand back far enough she—” Molly cupped her hand to convey a confidence in the manner of a back-fence gossip out of the funny pages. “—she looks just like Sister Lydia herself.” Molly giggled. She removed her hand. “Funny to think, that’s exactly how the good sister started her ministry: evan-guh-lizing on the street corners. Although this woman — she isn’t evan-guh-loozing. She’s — she’s — she’s what ?”

“She’s doom-glooming.”

Molly nodded exaggeratedly. “That’s it! Doom-glooming .”

“Say, did anyone ever tell you your eyelashes are the cats? Like they belong to some kind of— hiccough —storybook princess?”

Pat handed the silver flask to Molly. He utilized the hand that wasn’t fixed proprietarily to Molly’s shoulder. She snuggled up closer to this young man whom she’d met only two hours before — the young man who, within moments of their meeting, had begun to ply her with hootch from his private stock, even though there was an ample supply of unadulterated smuggled Canadian import inside. She noticed through the fuzzy, alcohol-sotted gauze of her semi-consciousness that the similarly cleft-chinned, blue-eyed, blond-haired (albeit of the dirty variety) young boy-man presently clutching her where no man or boy had ever clutched her before seemed halfway interested in her story, and so she resumed: “She stands on the street corner and talks about the end of the world, to be brought about by Sister Lydia — the false — the false prophet — the puh — puh — personal handmaiden, she says, of Satan himself.”

“She don’t very much like Sister Lydia, now do she?” Hiccough.

“No, she don’t.” Molly curled the ends of her lips down into a clown’s frown to embroider her point. “Which isn’t fair. Not fair at all. Sister Lydia, as evanjaleens go — why, she’s the snake’s hips! (No, no, let’s leave snakes out of this.) She’s the real deal!”

Molly took a gulp from the flask and handed it back.

“No, you keep it,” said Pat, waving it away in a wozzle-limbed flail of the hands. “There’s more where that came from.”

Molly’s head was tilted back. She was studying the cloudless night sky. Suddenly, she squealed, “Ooh! Is that a shooting star?”

Pat didn’t turn to either confirm or deny the observation. His gaze was fixed on the face next to his. He moved closer and whispered, “Must be your lucky night, Molly Olly. Wish on that star and as your fateful servant, I’ll make it all come true.”

Breathlessly: “Are you my genie in a bottle?”

“I am your genie, and if you want we should have a bottle, I’ll get us a bottle. Scotch whisky or Canadian rye?”

Molly sniggered. She had never been lit before. She didn’t understand why she felt so good and why everything— everything she’d said to the good-looking Aggie named Pat had been so well received. “You may please me most, sir,” she drawled, “by not nibbling my earlobe like that. It tickles. Here. Nibble my neck instead.” Molly lowered the scoop-neck collar of her purple crepe de Chine with two hooked fingers to give Pat even more of her neck to explore.

Pat moved his osculatory attention to Molly’s soft, supple neck as she tried valiantly to keep the conversation aloft.

“Still, I wah — wonder — what if there’s some truth to what this strange woman on the street corner is saying? What if— giggle, giggle —she has the gift of — oh you’re tickling me there too , you bad boy! What if something terrible really is about to happen?”

“Horse hooey! You think too much. Say, lessskidoo. Come for a walk with me.”

“ Can I walk? My legs feel like Jell-O.”