Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All: List 4

I poked and prodded the children of the Guardians, but none of them would listen.

On a clear, cold Sunday in early March, Frankie and the rest of the orphans found themselves in church for the third time, listening to Father Paul eulogize each of the four boys.

He lifted his trumpet to his lips and started to play “Taps,” low and slow, pausing at the end of each phrase so that another bugler in the bell tower could play the exact same part. Except the bugler in the bell tower wasn’t so much a bugler as a bungler, and kept getting the notes all wrong, or sour.

Sam, who was a kind boy, the kind who willed flowers to grow, who wanted to coax vegetables from the ground, would have been offended that these brave boys’ funeral was turned into a joke.

We got a night off and went out for gumbo. Do you know what that is? A spicy kind of stew with shrimp in it.

Wolf and I had followed him from the Rookery to an antiques shop on the north side of town. Porcelain table lamps. Ornate carved furniture with animal feet. Rare books bound in leather.

The cat’s large jewel eyes, an acid green, regarded Wolf and me placidly, fearlessly.

We were no danger to her, and she let us know this with a twitch of her tail, an unhurried saunter as she followed the man to the very back wall of the shop.

As he did in the flesh, he looked in the photos like something hewn by Michelangelo, freed from the stone with chisel and hammer.

A wide-eyed and bow-mouthed little thing, unassuming as milk.

Sister George found Frankie in class, conjugating German verbs.

Frankie woke up in the infirmary. She lay on her stomach, salved and bandaged by Nurse Frieda.

“You did this. You.” Toni repeated the word you, you, you, you, you—an invocation, an incantation—until Stella cracked.

“You did this. You.” Toni repeated the word you, you, you, you, you—an invocation, an incantation—until Stella cracked.

“I’m so sorry, Francesca,” she said, eyes roving over Frankie’s drawn face.

Frankie imagined Beatriz running through the streets of London as the Luftwaffe strafed the city, bombs everywhere.

“Do I have to scrub floors or toilets for penance? Do they want to cut off my hair?”

The skin of her calf was soft and pliant; she shuddered so prettily at his touch.

Frankie gingerly sat on the bed, her wounds still sore, as Toni unzipped her suitcase and began filling up one of those two drawers.

She was tall but mousy looking, broad in the cheeks and in the hips.

I resolved never to visit the angel again and went instead to my stretch of sand at Lake Michigan, to the library, and to the bar, where Mad Maureen plied me and Wolf with bourbon and her tattooed fish blew us kisses.

Not-drunk on the not-bourbon, we sat in the atrium of the Rookery, blearily watching the shadows creep.

A temptress, dark and alluring. The scholar’s son was smitten. Ensorceled.

They implored him to think of his family, to think of his community.

Equality for all was a lofty goal, but this was too much to ask.

He had to leave the Jezebel. He had to. And finally, worn down by the entreaties of the preacher, he did.

You will ruin him, she said. It’s an abomination, you’re a churchgoing woman, surely you’ve read scripture.

The preacher’s daughter flew into a rage at such blasphemy, but she didn’t show it.

Then she took a pillow from the settee, placed it over the Jezebel’s face, and held it.

She was surprised at how easy it was to vanquish evil.

‘The applicant was a good typist, but we don’t know about her shorthand. If we hire her, we’re going to need another typewriter, a desk, a chair, and more pens and pencils. Also, six reams of paper.’

I had done things like that too—I had poked the feet of children, tugged at their blankets, crooned till they heard me—without understanding how it worked, or why.

Well, said Mad Maureen, you need to let that go. Let yourself disperse through the air like a mist over the lake.

What if she had to work there with him, all day, in his small office, trapped and terrified like some feral cat?

He put the tiny nails back between his teeth, nodding yes, yes, yes, like a man reassuring himself of his own power, like a mad and fickle king.

Her yellow dress billowed, the soft curls on the back of her neck stirred.

Marguerite’s face smoldered, the sparks around her lengthening and deepening into ribbons of burnt umber.

Her fine brows furrowed, then smoothed out again.

A regal woman sat at the head of the table, salt and pepper hair piled high on her head.

I dropped to my knees like that man at the bookshop, just another sinner, just another supplicant.