The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (39 page)

My face flushed. “I did some extra work for him. You remember that trip to Chinatown.”

“Yes, but a bed? That’s quite a reward for one trip into the city, don’t you think?”

“It’s nothing, I assure you. Now, if you could give me a moment,” I said again. “Pour yourself a brandy if you like. I shan’t be long.” I shut the bedroom door behind me and pressed my shoulder against it to hold it closed. How could I explain the bed? And how much of what had really happened with Alley should I share?

“Just look at you,” Matina said, when I finally rejoined her, concerns about the bed apparently put to rest. “All black and blue. I warned you that people change colors when life gets away from them.” She chuckled at her own joke, then patted the sofa seat next to her, urging me to sit down. “Do you have something to put on that eye? Otherwise, it’s going to swell shut.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Alley asked you to go to Ohio with him?”

Matina snapped her fan shut and sat up a bit straighter. “My goodness. Is that what the two of you were fighting about?”

I said nothing.

“Barthy?”

I walked to the window and pushed it open for a bit of air. I looked up into the cloudless sky. “I cannot believe he asked you to move to Ohio.”

“Why ever not? I’m not getting any younger, you know. You should know I am considering it.”

I said nothing to this. What could I say?

“You
are
coming to the party tomorrow night, aren’t you?” Matina asked.

“Yes,” I said, still looking out the window.

“If you wanted to, I would allow you to escort me.”

My heart slowed to a deep thump. I turned to face Matina. “I’m sorry. I have other plans.”

Matina winced but maintained her cool bearing. “All right,” she said, nodding quietly. She smoothed her skirts into place. The little songbird scrabbled in her cage, awakened by the sound of our voices. I returned to the couch and sat next to Matina and tried to put my hand on top of hers, but she took hold of her bonnet and pulled it onto her lap.

“I could change, you know,” she said, her fingers playing with her bonnet’s satin ties. “I could lose a bit of weight. Find another profession.”

I felt as if I were standing on a cliff, the bottom so far away I couldn’t even see it.

“No, my dearest, you shouldn’t change. No one in the world is like you, and transforming yourself would require too much discipline and denial.”

“But this other person. Iell. You think she’s capable of changing herself?”

“She’s so much more than the rest of us, Matina. Really she is. I believe she’s even capable of living in the real world, if she should wish it. As can I. One can’t depend on Barnum all one’s life, you know. Eventually, the child must become a man.”

“And how is it she could live in the real world?”

“She’d only need to shave.”

We looked at each other for what felt to be an eternity, and then Matina began to laugh. She threw her head back and laughed so loudly her jowls shook and her eyes teared up.

I flew to my feet, desperate. “Stop! Please. What are you laughing at?”

“Oh, Barthy, so many things!”

Tears streaked down Matina’s cheeks and she struggled to pull
herself together. She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand and pushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

“I’m sorry, Barthy. Truly I am. But what about your fancy philosophy? All your talk of gifts and how Curiosities are so much better than everyone else? What about all that?” The lamplight illuminated Matina’s face now, and I could see that she was perfectly serious.

“There’s no reason why some of us can’t live in both worlds. With padding, I could pass. I could perform in the daytime, then live in the city. Or quit the profession entirely and run a little shop somewhere. Haberdashery, maybe. Or sell equestrian gear. That wouldn’t change my true self. A Prodigy born is a Prodigy for life.”

Matina gave me a quizzical look. “Is this why you were eating bread at lunch?”

I stepped away. “I wasn’t.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Barthy. Everyone
saw
you. Stuffing food into your pockets like a common thief. You did that because you want to live out in the world?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you’d better be sure this Iell wants the same things you do, that’s all I can say.”

When I offered to help Matina up from the couch, she refused—not with malice, but with determination—and I understood that not touching me was her way of letting me go. She tied her bonnet under her chin and moved toward the door.

“Matina.” I stopped her. “There’s one more thing I think you need to know.”

She stood waiting for Whatever I had left to say.

“About tonight. At McNealy’s. We fought because I told Alley about us.”

She jerked her chin as if I’d hit her. “What are you saying? What did you tell him?”

“I told him about our being together. That night.”

“You did
what
? How
could
you?”

“That’s why he attacked me, Matina. I shouldn’t have said anything,
I know that, and I’m terribly sorry. But at least everything is out in the open now. I think it’s better this way.”

A gust of wind blasted one of my windows open, sending the charcoal etchings flying off the walls. Hurrying to the window, I pulled it closed and did my best to gather up the drawings. Then I looked up to see Matina’s skirts billowing out like storm clouds.

“Better what way?” she said, in a voice that froze me to the spot.

“Matina. You have to understand. It was in the heat of the moment.”

She headed for the bedroom, her heavy steps shaking the floorboards and setting the glass in the wall sconces tinkling. Hesitantly, I followed.

“Oh, I know all about the heat of the moment. Yes, indeed.” She seemed to grow even bigger as she stood over my new bed. “You inspire me, Barthy, you really do. New friends. New beds as gifts. Maybe I could use a little change as well.”

“It was only Alley,” I muttered, praying she would calm down.

“Perhaps I should change the color of my hair or do it up a different way?” Matina’s hands yanked at her chignon. The restraining pins tinkled to the floor like metal rain, hunks of hair tumbling across her face in feral waves.

“Alley will understand, once you give him some time.”

Matina took a step closer to me and gripped the material at the top of her bodice, her breathing shallow.

“Or this plain old dress of mine, eh? Maybe I should change it?”

She drew in one deep, unnatural breath and pulled. There was a great ripping sound, and then the top of her chemise was exposed, the tatters of her blue bodice fluttering down her front in a horrifying parody of a party dress.

I inched away from her slowly.

“Then I could starve myself and grow a little fuzzy goatee.”

“I want you to calm down, Matina.”

Matina’s eyes tapered and got very, very dark. She gave off an animal smell that made my tongue tighten against the roof of my mouth.

“Then again, maybe I’m not the one who needs to change. Maybe I should be helping you along instead.” Her voice grew louder. “How about a little help, my love?”

She moved toward the bed, eyes narrowed, perspiration dripping from her forehead. In one frightening gesture, she yanked off the comforter and threw it toward the window. I dove after it, catching the edge just before it went out and over the building’s side.

Matina snatched a pillow from the bed. “Do you have any idea how horribly you’ve treated me?” She grabbed the pillow between her hands and yanked so violently that it exploded, filling the room with an avalanche of pale feathers. “And now, on top of everything else, you’ve shamed me in front of Alley.” She grabbed another pillow and held it aloft.

Fish started to bang on the other side of my door, yelling, “What’s going on in there?” I could hear the nuthatch in its cage by the window chirping in alarm.

Matina raised her voice even louder. “And this bed of yours, eh? This brand-new, who-knows-how-you-got-it-or-who-the-hell’s-been-in-it bed.” Matina ripped the second pillow apart and then threw a wild kick at the bed frame. Her hair flew around her head like a cyclone.

“You stop it now!” I yelled, but this seemed to enrage her all the more.

“You want me to stop?” she screamed. “Do you? Oh, I’ll stop, you pathetic little man. This is the end!”

The pounding on the door got louder.

Matina turned and stormed to the far end of the room. Then she hiked up her skirts, dropped her chin low into her neck, and came at me. My whole body went cold as she started running. She thundered forward, full of ferocity and grace. She bellowed once, then somehow pushed away from the floor and flew into the air, yelling out, “I am nobody’s whore!”

When she landed on her belly in the middle of the bed, the entire left side crashed down, reverberating through the floor and nearly knocking me off my feet.

That’s when Fish smashed through the lock. I remember the crack of the door and his yelling at us to cease, but by that time, I had lost all fear and had leaped toward Matina and grabbed hold of one of her ankles. From somewhere deep in my belly came a banshee yell of such intensity that the wall lamps shook and I was lost in the roiling sea of her flesh.

“Break it up, you two!”

Fish grabbed me by the legs, and for one moment the three of us stretched out in a screaming human chain. I hung on as long as I could, but my fingers gave way, and when I let go, I flew backward into Fish. The two of us tumbled to the floor, sweating and panting for air. Matina loomed over us, her face a raging tempest.

“You!” she screamed at Fish. “How dare you people make poor Alley leave? He is an innocent man! And you!” She glared at me, and when she spoke again her voice was so rough the hair on my neck rose. “You deserve exactly what you’ll get!”

She stormed out of the room, the tatters of her dress whipping behind her like flags in a gale, and feathers flew once more up into the air.

Fish turned to me. “One more outbreak like this and you are dismissed, Fortuno! Do you understand?”

“Barnum would never allow—”

“You’ve been hanging on by a string for quite a while. This is the last time any of us will warn you.”

Fish took off after Matina, leaving me buried in a mountain of plumage.

A
SMALL
table kicked aside in the scuffle had a gash along the top of the wood. I righted it, and then examined my mother’s comforter for damage before placing it carefully on the broken bed. Feathers had traveled like a snow squall, spreading from my bedroom into the parlor, dotting the checkered floor and sticking to the window lintels and walls. I swept what I could into the bedroom and began to stuff the feathers back into their casings.

My new bed was ruined. It tilted to the left, one leg of the frame splintered nearly in half. The best I could do was to haul in a pile of books from the parlor and prop them underneath to make it even, but it still looked like a battered ship washed up on some isolated shore.

Everything but Iell was lost to me now: Matina, Alley, and my self-control. Perhaps my very livelihood, since Fish would surely report my fight with Matina to one Barnum or the other. It was one thing to go out in the world by design, and quite another to be forced into doing it. The bells of St. Paul’s rang twice. It was two in the morning. Barnum’s party was only a few hours away. I heaved myself on top of the broken bed and lit a cheroot. Alley must have loved Matina for a very long time. My ankles throbbed. I dug into my pocket for the Chinaman’s root, ripped off a piece with my teeth, and chewed until it turned to mush.

T
HE SONG OF THE NUTHATCH DRAGGED ME
back from some dreamless place. Slivers of light pierced through the ill-fitting slats of my shutters, forcing me to lift a hand in front of my face. I tried focusing my gaze, but my left eye was swollen shut. It was the fourth of July. I was ravenous. And I’d have to face both Barnums at the party tonight. Where was Matina now? Where was Iell?

The broken bed settled an inch or two as I shifted my weight and shoved open the window slats with my foot. What an absolutely exquisite day. The sun glistened, and the winds from across the river blew as gently as the valley breezes of my youth. I forced myself up out of bed and pulled back the cover from my little bird’s cage. “Despite the ruckus last night, you sing like an angel,” I told her, which made her sing all the harder. A quick peek in the mirror told me that my eye looked terrible, so I slathered on paste makeup to cover the mottled skin. What could I do if I stank of zinc and oatmeal? I took a small bite of the root and put the rest back into my pocket, a momentary panic striking me that if I didn’t go to the Chinaman’s soon I’d have nothing left. I’d simply have to deal with that later. For now, more important things awaited.

My heart pounded as I sneaked downstairs and took a trolley to Iell’s boardinghouse. The house matron welcomed me warmly, in spite of my strange appearance, but I still ended up sitting in the downstairs parlor for nearly an hour before Iell would receive me. It gave me
plenty of time to organize my thoughts.
This is the end!
Matina had screamed the night before. Yes. She was right. Time to stop being afraid. Time to decide my future. Either Iell wanted me or she didn’t, and I needed to know one way or the other.