The Kingdom of Ohio (26 page)

“Sir.” The servant reappears beside Tesla's chair. “The letter was left at the concierge desk at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. I am afraid that no one knows who delivered it.”

Tesla nods, not really surprised.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No. Thank you.”

The attendant retreats, and Tesla reflects that, of course, it could all be a trap. The letter is a request for a meeting—but what if I ignored that fact? he muses. As he thinks this, however, he realizes that, trap or no, he will go: as whoever wrote the letter must have understood.

And who, he wonders, could the letter's author have been? He decides that the handwriting is probably that of a secretary; there are only a few individuals in the world capable of such work, none of them women. Certainly it was not Edison or Marconi, Tesla thinks. The mathematics in the letter have an elegance foreign to both men. Maybe Ludwig Boltzmann, although he has not produced anything original for decades. It could be that young upstart, Max Planck—but this is not quite his style. In fact, Tesla realizes, the structure of the equation is very much like something he might have written himself. . . .

Tesla stands, shivering. Nearly oblivious to his surroundings, he pulls on his coat and departs the club.

He walks through the city, the collar of his long coat turned up and his head bowed in thought. He considers the letter, and the strange girl who appeared in his room a week ago, and wonders how these things might be connected. He thinks of Morgan and Edison, of how he might use this development to his advantage. Now, if he chooses, he is in a position to dictate the terms of their cooperation. Let them come crawling, if they want his help. Around him, the street bustles—he is dimly aware of the pleas of hawkers and beggars, the crush of the crowd that parts before him.

He thinks of numbers and electricity, reason and magic.

 

 

 

 

THEY SPEND the next day in hiding, emerging from Paolo's apartment briefly to dispatch her letter, along with instructions for its delivery, to a street-urchin messenger. Aside from the two of them, the apartment is empty: Paolo departed early in the morning for the subway tunnels, and his wife left with the children on some unspecified errand.

By early afternoon the space between the peeling clapboard walls feels to Peter like a cage of nerves and unvoiced frustration. He tries to pass the time by reading the newspaper—
“Defiance in the Philippines! U.S. Troops Set to Smash Spanish Resistance, as President McKinley . . .”
—but eventually admits to himself that he's too preoccupied to focus on the headlines. Each time she comes near, wandering from living room to kitchen and back again, he has to restrain himself from looking up at her, needing to speak but with nothing definite to say.

Because finally, Peter thinks, he now sees the depth of her obsession, its fatal pull—still present despite everything he has done, and whatever connection exists between them. And also that, in the end, nothing he can offer will change her mind. Remembering how she sat next to him beside the fire in Central Park, Peter experiences a surge of anger and despair. It seems to him as if part of his own heart has become an alien thing.

Pacing the length of the shabby space, she is feeling a similar sense of anguish. She glances at Peter's brooding face, then away, ashamed. Turning the situation over in her head, she understands clearly that what she is asking of him is impossible, that from where he stands, it can only seem like madness. Some part of her is even glad for his refusal, that whatever happens to her at least he will be safe. Still, she finds herself unable to bear the thought of leaving him behind, because the truth, she knows, is that Peter's presence has come to mean more than she can fully admit—yet at the same time, she feels equally unable to turn away from what must be done.

Finally, Peter puts down the newspaper and leans back in his chair. “Guess we ought to talk.”

She forces herself to meet his eyes. “Is there somewhere outside we might go?”

He shakes his head. “Could be the police are still looking for us.”

She nods, sighing, and sinks into the chair across from him. “I know. But being stuck in this place, I feel that I am losing my mind.”

Peter bites back the sharp reply on the tip of his tongue. The cramped confines of the apartment weigh on him as well, stifling his ability to think clearly. And after a moment, he relents. “Thought I saw a scarf hanging on the kitchen door. Make you a little harder to recognize, maybe.”

“Are you certain—?” She looks up at him.

“No,” he says gruffly. “Not really. But let's go.”

They leave the apartment together. He guides their steps east and they cross from the tenement mazes of Paolo's neighborhood through the chaos of the streets toward the humbler brick-and-lathe warehouses near the water. She keeps her head bowed, anonymous beneath the fringe of the scarf, and Peter ducks his head below the upturned collar of his coat. After her time in jail and the meeting at Morgan's mansion, they both feel like hunted fugitives. Around them the city is a landscape of potential danger, the passage of each patrolling policeman and the glance of every stranger laden with the threat of recognition.

As they turn a corner, a band of ragged street urchins stares at them. A filthy boy of nine or ten, dressed in a kind of tunic made from a burlap sack and smoking a cigar, mutters something and the others laugh. Peter glares at them, then leans closer to her.

“Anything happens,” he whispers, “if there's trouble, you just run. We get separated, meet me at the Grand Central train station. In the main hall by the clock.”

She nods silently and they quicken their pace.

Despite his fears, though, they seem to have become temporarily invisible, swallowed up in the moving crowds by the faceless-ness of poverty. No one else looks twice in their direction, and eventually they arrive at the edge of the city, at the bank of the East River: an expanse of snow-covered grass and leafless trees, the dark current and the repeated arc of bridges. The empty walkway, the darkly shifting surface of the river and a skyline of Brooklyn smokestacks beyond. They stop.

It wasn't far from here, Peter realizes, that they had first met—a week ago now. Standing beside the railing overlooking the water, he turns to her.

“That day you saw me here,” he says, “what did you . . . ? ” Not sure why he asks, or how to finish, or even if he wants to know her answer.

“I saw you looking at the birds.”

“Don't remember that. I remember looking at the city.” He gestures at the silhouettes across the river.

A silence, as they both search for what to say next.

“I am truly sorry for all of this,” she says. “I never intended you to be involved in this way.”

He looks at her; she is staring at the water.

“Guess I know that.” And maybe it's true, he realizes: other than a place to stay, she hasn't asked him outright for anything. “But, still.” He shrugs.

She turns to him, hoping the tearing sensation in her chest doesn't show on her face. “Peter, you should not concern yourself with this. You have already done more than enough.”

He doesn't answer.

“I will go to see Tesla alone. This is my risk to take.” She forces herself to smile, abruptly near tears at the thought of losing him. “You should leave, as you wish.”

Peter nods automatically. He is thinking about what lies ahead of her: more danger and fear, without any possible gain or end that he can see. A lost cause; not anything worth calling a cause at all, really. Even so—

“Thanks. Not sure I can do that, though,” he says, an admission as much to himself as her.

“Why do you say that?” She blinks, her eyes and nose red from the winter air.

Peter feels a brush of cold on his cheek. He looks up and sees that it has started to snow. A scattering of white flakes drifting downward, settling over the walkway and disappearing into the river. He looks at her face, the black tangle of her hair, stark against the white snow and pale gray sky.

Trying to think of a way to explain the things churning inside him, he is painfully aware of how he must seem to her: a country bumpkin, out of place in the world of privilege where she has lived, imaginary or otherwise.

“Guess I've started to like the company.” He shrugs again, a sudden tightness in his chest.

“Let Folly smile, to view the names of thee and me in friendship twined
.
”
She murmurs this, looking down at the water and reaching out to rest her hand on his arm.

Beneath her light touch, Peter discovers that he is trembling. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” She glances at him, a flicker of a sad smile. “A line from Byron that suddenly came to me.”

“Byron. He's a poet?”

“He was.”

For a time, they stand there without speaking. Their breath steams in the cold. The snow continues to slowly fall.

Peter tries to stand very still, a kind of dizzy urgency inside him.

None of this makes sense, he thinks. And there's nothing—couldn't be anything, really—between us, at least beyond these moments. Still, at the same time, it comes to him that maybe love is always this way, a long-shot gamble: a bet against the odds that some intangible connection—even one so strange as this—will outweigh all the details and triviality of the world that drive people apart.

He reaches up and closes his hand over hers. Neither says anything for a time, both of their awareness focused on this small contact, skin against skin.

“I'll go with you,” Peter says, before he can reconsider. “I mean, when you go see Tesla.”

“I don't—” She shakes her head, biting back the objection that politeness requires. “Thank you.” She looks up at him, her eyes shining and wet.

He nods. His lust and longing and loneliness—and everything else—for a moment fallen away.

The bare branches of trees along the walkway, the silhouettes of the city. Barges drifting past on the current. Overhead, the cloud-blanketed sky is beginning to darken.

“If only,” she finds herself thinking, “if only—” Not knowing how the sentence should end. She looks down, shaken by the intensity of her feelings, and pulls her hand away.

Peter takes a deep breath.

“Well, anyway,” he says, “come on. Figure it's about time now.”

 

 

 

 

SILENTLY they start walking again, across Grand Street, where escaped Chinese railroad-slaves sell fish and produce in sidewalk stalls. Looking over at the mechanic's mournful face, she feels a sudden, overwhelming impulse to kiss him. Because if not now, she wonders, then when? In the whirlpool days and danger of the world, the opportunity may not come again. Because finally, she admits to herself, the thing that exists between them goes beyond what may be ignored or explained away.

Turning a corner, she sees a uniformed police officer glance sharply in their direction. Clutching Peter's arm, she begins to move faster. He keeps pace, shooting her a questioning look. Peering over her shoulder, with a jolt of fear she realizes that the policeman is following, also moving more quickly. She stops abruptly, stepping into the shuttered alcove of the nearest store, and pulls Peter after her.

“What—?” he starts.

“Ssh.” She leans against him, tilting his face toward her own. He frowns down at her—then his arms circle her waist. The warm pressure of his lips against her mouth. She closes her eyes. His breath, the rough stubble on his cheek, exerting a kind of gravitational pull.

For a long moment she surrenders herself to this, the world disappearing. Until, abruptly, it returns and she turns her head away, shocked by her own behavior. This is the first time she has kissed a man.

For the space of a dozen more heartbeats she stands pressed against him, eyes still shut. Somehow, without looking, she can tell that Peter's eyes are closed as well. His hands tracing abstract shapes on her back.

She finds herself wondering, through a fog of longing and frustration, why it has to be like this. Why, when it should be so easy between them, she needs to make it hard. It makes no sense, she thinks, the power of these dumb animal things, at a time like this: the dumb yearnings of muscle and bone.

She opens her eyes. Over Peter's shoulder, she sees the policeman walk past without looking at them. With an effort of willpower, she pulls away. Before she can, though, he cups her face and guides her back against him. This second kiss longer than the first, an urgency of warmth and yearning.

“No.” She shakes her head, hoping that he can't see how she is trembling, suddenly afraid of what may happen to her, and the resolve that brought her here, if she allows the moment to continue. She takes a step down the street. “We have to go—”

Peter opens his mouth and closes it. Finally he nods, longing and confusion clearly written on his face. He follows her out of the alcove and they continue on their way.

She looks up at the passing buildings and the bright stone of the moon, pale and narrow as a scythe's blade. And she wonders what, of all this, she will remember years from now—if, indeed, “years from now” even has meaning anymore. Her memory seems like a landscape washed over by a flood: certain features remain the same but all the details are changed, entire new hills and valleys added where there were none before. Perhaps, she thinks, only this. Glancing upward in the frozen nighttime streets to see, for a moment, the crescent winter moon overhead, her heart pounding, still warm with the memory of his lips.