All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred fourteen)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Four

Counterfeits

(part one hundred fourteen)

The dining room door flew and hit the stopper.

Shifting in came a man, bundles of papers tucked up in armpits. “Hey, all. Hey, Diana!”

The waitress laid down the coffee kettle.

“Damn, it’s big. I don’t know if the news come down this way yet. Garfield…”

“I heard that.”

Either side of the man’s sleeve showed a feature story’s black borders. “City papers. Richmond. Local won’t get it out for a day or two. Print portrait and some verses shot off by Mrs. Gibson.”

Laureate, Richard guessed, of Richmond, Indiana. Recommendations, as to paying the full two cents. The man’s elbows clamped the bundles tight.

“Lay some of them on the bar, John,” Diana said. “Don’t you worry, I’ll collect.”

Richard grunted, to gain eyes, standing. “Say, folks, I’m going over to the Palmyra. Tell you what, I’ll just go ahead and buy…maybe a dozen, couple dozen…hand em out. I’m with Mr. Allen, the actor. October first, that’s a Saturday, Shawnee Theatre, Cincinnati, play’s called The Fleeting Hours.”

Like Bill, the news-hawker did not hanker to know the oeuvre of Allen. He wore an apron, stuffed his takings in a pocket, and kept loose bills from fluttering by weighing them with a big Bowie knife. But he had change for a ten.

“Dead. They gone hang Guiteau.”

“Have to go through the trial…ain’t he crazy, though? Thinks the angels talk to him.”

The watchman circled in, and a few dockhands who’d been yarning in a corner.

Richard began to feel H’ville allowed no wagering games, either. But he had his money, his stack of papers, and need only exit in the most natural way contrivable.

He spotted his friend. “You take care, Bill. Come see the play.”

He grinned at the watchman.

To watch the street go by, Mrs. Allen gave him the back of her hat. She wanted the two of them to see a statue. Or, more than a statue—a rare wonder in the art of fountain-craft. Because it was the sight of the city, and ought to be seen, and because Allen was playing on 8^th Street, where they’d left him.

Allen could tolerate Richard as escort, a fair insult. Judging for himself, he would have said, I have an appealing face…who’s to say I can’t steal a man’s wife…

It might be a stretch to say handsome. As the world valued such things, it wasn’t true. He did not grow whiskers, because his father did, and Richard thought he might punch the man who mistook him for his father.

His father, character in mind, would tell him, “You have a weak face.”

But his brother took it ill, very ill, that Élucide Gremot liked that face. Richard was confident he sat mid-scale, well above Lawrence, a place or two below Ryan-Neville.

122

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred fifteen)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)