“You’re very determined.”
“Only fools are otherwise.”
She picked the letter off the table and stuffed it into Quinn’s trouser pocket, then moved the candelabra farther apart and sat on the table.
“Do you remember how John came to Magdalena when she was dead, how he raised her clothing?”
“I remember it vividly.”
“I want you to do the same with me now. My breasts are blushing. Can you see?”
“I can.”
“I feel a sharp rush of blood to them when I get excited.”
“I could feel their pulse when I touched you.”
“They make the rest of me function. They’re the brains of my sex.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Now, I want you to look at me, but you must be precise in what you think. I’m accessible to the man who knows exactly how he loves me. No voyeur will ever reach me.”
She lowered herself into a supine position on the table, freeing up her robe and chemisette. Quinn, seeking precision but astonished by Maud’s behavior, could only watch with awe her reenactment of Magdalena’s posture, the array of her apparel before resurrection.
“For God’s sake, hurry up,” Maud said, and Quinn folded her robe and chemisette upward to reveal the inversely triangulated center of his dreams, more striking than he had imagined, more symmetrical, the auburn crest of it an arc, an emerging sunrise of irresistible invitation. Maud closed her eyes and let her arms fall into the same position as Magdalena’s of yore. Quinn put the palm of his hand on her sunrise and she opened her eyes.
“No,” she said. “We’re not ready.”
“Who says we’re not?”
“My blood.”
“Why are you with him?” Quinn said.
“I have to be with someone once in a while. He’s bright.”
“And he’s rich.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It used to.”
“Why are you talking about money when I’m in this position?”
“You should leave him.”
“Why don’t you take me away from him?”
“I wondered when you’d get around to kidnapping.”
“Look at me, Daniel,” she said, and she spread herself.
Quinn looked. “You are a most willful woman,” he said.
“Everyone has a right to a willful life,” said Maud. “I dare you to take me away.”
“And so I shall,” said Quinn. “But first I must know. Have you ever done this in front of a cake?”
She sat up and covered herself, moved the candelabra to where they had been before her ritual, snuffed the candles, opened the drapes to the upper porch, and sat on the velvet sofa precisely where she had been prior to Quinn’s arrival. Gordon then knocked on the door of the sitting room.
“Maud, may I come in?”
“Of course,” she said, and Gordon entered, smiling.
“I have to change for this evening,” he said, “and I wondered whether we should prepare a room for Mr. Quinn. I invited him to join us at the bazaar tonight.”
“What a good idea,” said Maud.
“I guess it would be valuable to see it,” said Quinn.
“It’s quite a spectacle for Albany,” said Gordon.
“Albany has spectacles and spectacles,” said Quinn.
“Then I’ll have them go ahead with the room.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Quinn, “I wonder could I have the one I used to sleep in. Next floor up, opposite the stairs.”
“We have much grander rooms than that,” said Gordon.
“There’s grandeur also in repeating history.”
“Then you shall have it. I’ll have Cappy bring up your things and stable your horse.” Gordon looked at Maud. “You seem to be in your nightclothes.”
“I’m about to bathe,” said Maud.
“We’ll meet at a later hour, then,” said Quinn, moving toward the door.
“An excellent idea,” said Gordon, standing pat.
My dearest Daniel [Quinn read, lying in the bed he last lay in six years earlier, the careful handwriting before him composed six years earlier also], I am appalled by your unfeeling ways. You are a man of mercurial moods, and if you do not change, I shan’t promise that our love will survive, which would be lamentable. I have never ceased of loving you, but when you came into my dressing room and I hugged you as a savior, I felt something I had not felt since our kiss by the shore of Saratoga Lake (and I have known certain compelling intimacies with men in the intervening years). I conclude from this feeling that I have an enduring element in my makeup, one that, unlike most mortal characteristics of our species, resists change. Poets have talked of this but I have never credited them with propounding anything except romantic twaddle, and yet I must now confess they knew something I heretofore did not.
But you left me in such haste that I did not even gain the moment to tell you what led to our separation in Saratoga. I saw all that happened to you on the veranda that afternoon. I did not ride off on the roan stallion, as some thought, but created the ruse of my departure by convincing a stableboy to take the horse to a neighboring farm. I then hid in the hayloft with my bag and observed all events, for I was in need of time to think what I should do. Intuitively I knew you would never accept my solution to the situation in which I found myself that afternoon after our return. I was, of a suddenness, sorely pressed to provide for Magdalena in light of John McGee’s decision to leave us and pursue a career as a prizefighter.
Magdalena, headstrong of course, decided to depart Obadiah’s farm immediately and resume our life on the road. She thought of accepting an offer from a New York producer who wanted her to travel and dance and then meet with visitors curious to observe her beauty up close. She was to charge one dollar for each personal handshake. But I was fearful of her health, and knew it would worsen with travel. She was in a most sorry and withdrawn condition and I felt it my duty to bring her to a less grueling fate. This I achieved by shifting Obadiah’s obsession from Magdalena to myself. I discovered he was a man of peculiar predilections, obsessed by the backs of women’s knees, and so I agreed to make such parts as I owned available for his periodic scrutiny in exchange for his solace and support for the dwindling Magdalena, and a curb on his attentions to her.
In short order Magdalena grew easeful and serene, and in time I hired a woman companion, a French immigrant girl named Cecile, and began my life as the sojourning spiritualist, which afforded me small income and much danger from malevolent Catholic Irishmen. During one visit at Troy a group of them sought my destruction, thinking me an apostle of Satan. I eluded them and struck out from those shores soon enough to become the successor of Mother and Auntie, which is to say, I became the daring danseuse, which I remained until you saw me in my triumph as Mazeppa. This, I fear, will be the bane of my days, as well as my financial salvation. A new life opens before me now, with bookings everywhere. I do loathe these particulars, but I am comforted by the memory of our last embrace, and I send you my fondest caresses.
Until we meet again, I remain, your truest love, Maud Fallon.
In the carriage Maud asked Quinn’s permission to practice aloud what she would be reading later in the evening: excerpts from Scott and Keats; and from her handbag she took a slim volume, Marmion and The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The reading, she explained, was her contribution to the Army Relief Bazaar. Tonight she would take no fee for her work, which, of late, she had been doing in salons and temples where the arts flourished.
“Elocution in the salon has replaced horses in the hippodrome for Maud,” Gordon said.
“Elocution in the salon. Exotic in the extreme,” said Quinn.