The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (38 page)

Up the Grand Staircase I skittered. I didn’t stop until I reached the Moral Lecture Room and ducked inside to regain my bearings. Breathe deep. Breathe deep. My heart calmed as I looked at all those birds in cages. A bird or two had begun to sing, and it warmed me. Maybe we were all Gaffs in the end, all of us hungry to be different
from what we were. Before Barnum threw him out, Alley had already decided to leave. Was he any less of a man for choosing a different path? Who really cared about this gift of mine? If I ate, I would be normal, and as a full-bodied man, I could be of much more help to Iell. What would it matter if Barnum dismissed me then? I could work in the world like any other man. I could take care of us both.

The birdsong grew, and I noticed that all the birds were singing—all of them but one. She was a white-breasted nuthatch with under-developed wings. I stuck my finger through the wicker bars, and the nuthatch looked up at me silently. I knew what had to be done: I slipped the bird and her tiny cage beneath my jacket and maneuvered into the hallway and up the stairs.

As soon as I got to my rooms, I set her cage on the sill of my window, and the nuthatch began to sing just as she was born to do. I sat down next to her and started to draw. It was a self-portrait. I worked fast, but when I was done, I thought the lines looked too thin, so I took up a thicker quill and drew hastily until the lines thickened, each outline building on the layer beneath it, making the figure more substantial by burying the first lines I had drawn. I stared at the picture, aching for the old times, when things were plainly this or that and I understood my world.

An hour later, I sneaked down to the kitchen and stole a leg of lamb.

I
DIDN’T
mean to go looking for Alley that night. Some part of me simply had to get out of the Museum, and I thought McNealy’s might remind me of what was important. The hope that Alley might be hanging about playing cards was an added attraction. Climbing the porch stairs and tipping my hat to the Plaques for the Dead, I felt almost like my old self, and when the chaos of McNealy’s swept over me, I felt certain that going there had been the right thing.

Bridgett sat on the far side of the room, swilling ale with some of the theater players. Ducking to avoid her, I moved toward where Mac
usually played cards, and sure enough, there was Alley. A Polish midget sitting across from him sparkled with gold jewelry, including several watch chains and wrist bangles and an oversized belt buckle in the shape of New York. Next to him sat the good Reverend Smalley from our Sunday services.

I pushed my way over to their table, tipping my hat to the three-antlered moose head hanging above them on the wall.

Mac kicked an empty chair toward me. “Three times in one month, Fortuno? You’re almost becoming a regular.”

“So God lets his servants have a night off, does he, Reverend?”

The Reverend smiled. “Even God likes to live it up now and then.” His pile of chips was quite impressive.

Alley looked up at me and shoved a loose mop of hair out of his eye. He seemed quite cheerful, even though the skin on his knuckles was broken and bruised. I pulled my chair closer to his and took a look at the cards he was holding. Three queens and a two. An excellent hand.

“How are you, my friend? Where are you staying?”

“Over on Vesey Street with the house musicians. Ain’t all that bad, really.” Alley shrugged, rearranging his cards. “And it won’t be for long. I’m leavin’ in just a few days.”

“I thought you needed to make a bit more money first,” I said, pulling my chair closer to the table.

“I made a little extra, and I’m doin’ great tonight.” Alley tossed five chips into the pot, then, on impulse, two more. “Sure hope it ain’t true what they says about a man who’s lucky at cards bein’ unlucky in love.” He laid his queens on the table, dropping cigar ash onto the front of his shirt in the process. Mac snorted and tossed in his cards facedown. The midget pushed away from the table and left without a word, and Reverend Smalley sighed. Alley pulled the pot to him, stacking his chips a dozen high.

“What’s the matter, Bridgett doesn’t want you to leave her? She’s just over yonder, you know. I’d be happy to fetch her for you if you like.” I rose to make good on my threat.

“Bridgett?” Alley looked at me, clearly surprised. “I thought you knew, Fortuno. I’ve asked Matina to come to Ohio with me.”

The raucousness around me disappeared. I sat down with a decided thump. “You did what?”

“Yesterday. Don’t know if she’ll go yet. She turned me down, but you know how she is, sayin’ one thing one day and doin’ something else the next.”

“Why in the world would you ask Matina to do such a thing?” My voice came out louder than I’d meant it to, but surely he knew that Matina didn’t belong anywhere else but in the Museum. “Don’t you know how hard she’s worked to get where she is? Barnum even asked her to do a show for his birthday. A real break for her.”

“She told me you said not to do it.”

“That’s not the point.” I felt betrayed. Matina and I used to keep our conversations to ourselves. “For God’s sake,” I said harshly. “Why would she throw everything away to go live on some farm in the middle of nowhere?”

The lines in Alley’s forehead deepened. “What’s the matter with you, Fortuno? You’re all red in the face. You two are only friends. But Matina and me—”

“You don’t know anything about Matina,” I yelled. And then before I could stop myself, I continued in a harsh whisper. “We’re more than friends. We’ve been . . . intimate.”

“Intimate?” Alley scratched his head and sat up straighter in his chair. His muscled arms went rigid, his hands rolling into fists.

I wished to God I’d kept my mouth shut, but didn’t Alley have a right to know the truth about the woman he was trying to steal away?

“It wasn’t anything serious, Alley, not really. But I don’t want to see you disappointed. Take someone else if you think you need a helper. Bridgett would go with you in a heartbeat.”

Alley didn’t move for the longest time, and then he grabbed Mac’s glass full of whiskey and tossed it back. He reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. Then a third. By that time, he had turned alarmingly cheerful. Glass in hand, he yelled out into the tavern,
“Let’s drink to my friend here. Come on, you sluggards. Glasses up to becoming a man!” Then he settled his huge arm down around me like a fallen oak, and I winced. I met eyes with Mac, who gave me a what-can I-do shrug.

As soon as I could slip out of his grip, I left Alley at the table and pushed through the crowd. Truth was, aside from being afraid of Alley when he was drinking, I also felt guilty as hell. I’d broken my promise to Matina. But then again, no one was guarding
my
feelings. I rubbed my belly, which was aching again for food.

I settled onto a bar stool next to a man with a bone in his lip who was arguing vehemently with Esmeralda over the price of a scotch. Esmeralda gave me a wink when she saw me. Pulling out my handkerchief, I wiped the sweat from my brow, determined to lose my worries in a glass of something strong.

“Whiskey,” I said, when Esmeralda got to me. “And a plate of your lamb stew if you’ve got any this evening.”

“Lamb stew?” She poured my drink and looked around to see if anyone else had heard me ask for food.

I sipped at the whiskey. My reflection leered back at me from the crackled mirror behind the bar, and I had a vision of my cheeks filling out, my neck growing thick and strong.

“Fortuno!” Alley’s voice boomed from behind me.

I swiveled on my stool and stared into the face of a miserable man. His eyelids drooped, his nostrils flared, and tears ran down his deeply creased cheeks.

“It’s
your
fault she said no!” he cried.

“I’m sorry I upset you, my friend. Sorry I said anything at all. But what would Matina want with a farmer’s life?”

“She mighta said yes if it hadn’t been for you. She never woulda been like a”—he shut his eyes in misery—“like a wife to you, if she didn’t love you.”

“She doesn’t love me!”

“And now you’re gonna marry her, and I’ll never—”

“Marry Matina? Goodness, no. In fact, I’m in love with someone else. Someone so remarkable—”

Although I saw it coming, I barely had time to duck. Alley’s fist whooshed past the side of my head, and I threw myself sideways, all but flying off my stool. I landed on the hardwood floor, and by the time my ears cleared a crowd had gathered, laughing and jeering.

“Come on, Skinny, let him have it!”

“Two bucks the skeleton won’t survive a hit.”

“Four says the strong guy’s too drunk to find him.”

I lay there, my left eye swelling shut. From the corner of my other eye, I saw Bridgett standing on a bar stool, craning her neck to get a better look.

An inch from my face, Alley stomped his mud-crusted boots against the filthy floor. I rolled over onto my back.

“Get up, Fortuno.” He gazed down on me, swaying from side to side and almost sobbing. “I can’t let you treat a lady like that.”

And I understood how stupid I’d been. How long had Alley loved Matina? I thought back to how he always looked at her like she was a precious thing, how he defended her name. He had been courting her for some time, hadn’t he, and some part of me had known it but could not accept such a thing.

My thoughts disappeared when, glowering like a mad bull, Alley bent down and grabbed me by the collar, lifting me with one hand. I peered into his drunken eyes and watched helplessly as his other arm lifted over my head to strike me a fatal blow. The crowd watched openmouthed as he slashed his arm down like a guillotine, but he stopped two inches from my neck.

“Fuck all!” he cried, and dropped me painfully onto the stool. “I’m all fired up over nothing, just another whore without a heart.”

I could have left it at that. It wasn’t Matina I wanted, was it? Alley was clearly the better man for her, and I should have told him to take her away, to care for her in the manner she deserved. We could have parted as friends. But my pride was hurt and adrenaline surged through
my veins. It was as if I were a lion kept too long in captivity and some gigantic hand had loosened the door of my cage. Who was Alley to ask Matina to leave her life at the Museum just to be with him? Who was he to attack me for telling him the truth? I hopped on top of the stool and faced him, sternum to sternum.

“You’re an arsonist,” I hollered into his rheumy eyes. “You can’t control your impulses, and a hundred acres of farmland isn’t going to change that. We are what we are, and that’s that.”

Alley swung at me again, but this time, I ducked and let his arm sail past me, the weight of it turning him around. While he was distracted, I jumped on his back and held on for dear life. Alley went spinning, and within seconds he tumbled over a bar stool and careened, forehead first, into the wall.

I got McNealy and three others to carry him to the carriage and send him back to Vesey Street. Then I pushed back into McNealy’s, the crowd parting as I passed. Placing the bar stool back on its feet, I hopped up and slammed my hand onto the bar.

“Esmeralda,” I yelled out. “Where is that bowl of stew I ordered? I want it. Now!”

A
S SOON AS
I
GOT HOME FROM THE BAR,
Matina rounded the corner of the resident hallway like a runaway wagon.

“Bartholomew. Tell me exactly what happened!”

I braced myself when I saw her coming, gripping the doorknob, my hands still filthy from the fight in the bar. A dusty breeze blew in from the open transom of one of the hallway windows.

“Bridgett told me you had a run-in with Alley at McNealy’s. Have you totally lost your senses? Barnum will have a fit if he finds out you’ve been fighting.”

“I was rude. He was drunk.”

Matina reached over and touched my eye. “He might have
killed
you, Barthy.” I held my breath to hide any telltale odors from the lamb stew I’d just eaten. “What do you mean you were rude?” she asked.

“Must we discuss that now? As you can see . . .” I gestured at my filthy clothes and pushed open the door to my rooms, nodding her inside. Light pooled around us when I lit the lamp on the entrance table. Thankfully, the stolen nuthatch on my windowsill stayed asleep beneath the cover on her cage.

I helped Matina off with her cape and guided her toward the parlor couch. She sat down in her usual place and untied the strings of her bonnet, mussing her hair in the process. Although she ignored the old piece of tatting abandoned on the back of my settee, she made a point of turning over the embroidered pillow she’d made me so that its message—
He who stands with the Devil does himself harm
—lay faceup.

“If you would give me a moment,” I said, “I need to change my jacket.”

When I opened the door to my bedroom, Matina sucked in her breath. “What in the world is that?”

“What?” Surprised, I followed her gaze. “Oh. The bed. It’s nothing. A gift from Barnum.”

Matina snapped open her fan and waved it rapidly back and forward in front of her face. “Why would Barnum give you such a thing?”