The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“No.”


“Liar. I can feel you tapping your fingers on the headboard. You’re such a twitcher.”

“Sorry.”

“You worrying?”

“No.”

“You’re the worst.”

“I don’t want to keep you up. You look nice when you’re sleeping.” She looks perfect.

She nuzzles her cheek into her pillow and cracks a dark brown eye at me. “Thanks. You know, you don’t have to stay.”

“I want to.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to see your breakfast face. Go. It’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I know where you live.”

*

I take the turn by the salt marsh hard and the Ford’s wheels spin. Here’s the heart-in-throat feeling I’ve been avoiding. I’m about to lose my job. And the house—I’ve slept with the daughter of the only person who might have been willing to lend me the money to fix it. I don’t feel as badly about it as I should. I don’t feel badly at all, which is worse.

Back in the house I know it’s pointless to try to sleep. It doesn’t take long to find the slip of paper—it’s still in the dresser drawer. There are three names on it: my grandmother’s; a second, Celine Duvel; and there in round, wide cursive is Bess Visser. Alice was right. I can’t resist a puzzle.

The light from Frank’s porch is almost enough to fill the living room. He’s hung up a horseshoe crab shell to dry on his porch railing. It swings a little in the breeze. I think of Alice, alone in bed, and wish I’d stayed.

I write the names in a notebook and set it on my desk. Tomorrow I’ll dig up what I can on them. Then I list every name I’ve ever heard mentioned from my mother’s family—a pitiful handful. I open the book. The pages fall to a detailed yet crude sketch of a tarot card, a tall white building on a dark background rent by lightning. Below the sketch, delicately penned letters name the card the Tower. From a window in the tower, a man leaps, falling to the waves and rocks below.





4


Hermelius Peabody’s back was pressed against a wall shelf while his throat was half crushed by the forearm of a surprisingly strong Russian crone. His initial response to Madame Ryzhkova’s request had been negative, but he was rapidly becoming amenable to her position.

“An apprentice?” He coughed. “Madame, Amos is the most profitable Wild Boy I’ve encountered, not to mention that he is without speech. How precisely would you work with him?”

Ryzhkova made a noise that fell between snarl and squawk. “We will work well. The cards say it will be so.”

When Peabody protested, Madame Ryzhkova muttered a stream of Russian that sounded murderous. He’d always been somewhat frightened of her. She had simply appeared one day in New York City as he’d staggered from an inn on the East River wharves. She’d stuck her hand out of an alleyway, addressed him by his proper name, and said she would travel with him because the cards had decreed it. Though Peabody did not trust her, he couldn’t turn away someone with such a pronounced sense of theatricality. Within hours of installing her in a wagon, she’d transformed it into an exotic room of fabric, cushions, and scents that made the head spin. He was certain she knew her way around poisons; she’d once slipped a powder into his food after he’d refused to advance her wages toward a bolt of silk. “You cannot purchase what you have not yet earned,” he’d said. She’d smiled, and at eight o’clock sharp his guts had twisted, curling him up like a pill bug. The next three days were spent sweating in his wagon, shaking, until Ryzhkova appeared.

“Fortunate for you I know how to take pain away,” she’d said, shoving a handful of bitter ashes in his mouth. By sunset he was recovered. Peabody was no fool; Ryzhkova received her advance that very night.

Not three hours after Ryzhkova backed him against the wall, Peabody told Amos the way of it.

“My boy, it is time for you to move on to better things.” He beamed at Amos, who sat on a footstool. Amos shifted nervously and turned his palm upward in question.

“Have no fear; you’ve not done anything wrong, Amos. You were in fact the best Wild Boy I’ve ever had. Therein lies the problem, you see?”

Amos did not.

“You are no longer a boy. To keep you a Wild Boy is to chain your potential.” Peabody ran a hand through his beard in thought. “You’ll find I’ve devised a most exciting opportunity. Madame Ryzhkova’s taken a shine to you. I believe she has need for an apprentice.”