Taking this as a sign of assent, Agnes went to her clothing rack. She removed a long green coat and a pair of small flat shoes.
“We’ll have to get him into new clothes so he won’t be recognized. The costume department will have plenty. Then you and I will need to leave separately. If Edison is having you followed, we can’t take any chances. A few minutes after you go, I’ll take him to a carriage and get him to Gramercy.”
“What will you tell your mother?”
“That’s my problem,” she said as she slipped the soft shoes onto her feet. “I’ve a performance tonight. Come over after, to check on him. Midnight, on the dot.”
“All right.”
“Now help him up.”
Paul felt nervous about leaving Tesla again. After finally locating him, he was letting him once again out of his sight? And yet he had no other choice.
Paul turned quickly to Agnes. “Thank you,” he said. “I promise this affair will not distract unduly from your singing.”
“Well, I’ll tell you an awful secret about the opera,” said Agnes as she rang the bell for a stagehand. “It’s the same show every night.”
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
—THOMAS EDISON
PAUL DECIDED THAT he would not say a word to Westinghouse about the sudden reemergence of Nikola Tesla. Not now.
How could he? Westinghouse was isolated in Pittsburgh and without much experience in high-society subterfuge. He was a blunt boss with little patience for dissembling. If Westinghouse knew, then so might a half dozen top engineers in his lab. Or any of the executives in his manufacturing divisions. All of whom had worked for Westinghouse for years longer than Paul had. Paul trusted Westinghouse with his life. But he could not trust him with this secret. Not yet.
Paul grew angry. Not at himself, for deciding to withhold pertinent information from his client. Not at Tesla, for his mental instability, or at Carter and Hughes, for their small-minded treacheries. Not at Westinghouse, for being so unsuited to secrecy as to require being deceived.
Paul was angry at Thomas Edison. This soul-corroding position in which he found himself was the result of a war that Edison had started.
Thomas Edison was the devil himself. And the real measure of his villainy was the behavior he’d forced on Paul.
—
That evening Paul paid the first of many nighttime visits to Gramercy. Most nights, after leaving the office, he would descend from the hanging step of his carriage between the hours of eleven and twelve and peer quickly around the park. He would search for signs of anyone watching. But of course in such a vibrant setting it would be impossible to tell. The restaurants and alehouses along Irving Place overflowed with revelers, young men and women promenading gaily beneath the streetlamps even into the winter. The theater at Irving Plaza was only a few blocks down, and if Paul happened to arrive when a show was getting out, he would find the streets flooded with merry music lovers. In all the visits he paid to Agnes’s house, he never failed to hear a tune in the air outside it.
Gramercy was not the sort of neighborhood that would take too much notice of a young man paying late-night visits to an actress’s darkened home.
On Paul’s first visit, Fannie was the one to open the door and bid him to enter. She tilted her neck back to stare him straight in the eyes.
“I don’t like this,” she informed him.
“Were I in your position, I wouldn’t like it either, Mrs. Huntington. If there were any other solution, I can promise you that I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my suffering friend.”
“My daughter has come too far, in too short a time, to be set back by the blackmail of a dishonest theater manager, the debauched soirees of high-fashion pedophiles, the rantings of a head-sick lunatic, or the schemes of a wily attorney just slightly too clever for his own good. My daughter likes you. I don’t. So you may rest assured that I will turn on you, and your friend Tesla, at the very first opportunity you give me to do so.”
However Agnes had convinced her mother to allow them to host Tesla, it had worked. Still, she could hardly be called a willing accomplice to their plans. Understandably so. If the wrong eyes caught sight of the small-hour visits a young man was paying to her daughter, there would be hell to pay.
This would be the longest of Paul and Fannie’s interactions. He would typically nod a hello in future visits. She would scowl in return. They exchanged little beyond the barest of formalities.
On some nights Agnes would be home upon Paul’s arrival, on other nights not. After the first few days, she gave Paul a key so that he might let himself in, but he still felt it impolite to enter without warning. Some proprieties, at least, must be preserved.
Inside, Paul would be greeted by the flickering gas lamps along the smoothly carved vestibule. He’d hang his coat. And, once November had given way to early December, he’d smack the snow from his scuffed leather boots.
Tesla had been given a small bedroom on the second floor that had once been a maid’s quarters. He spent most of his time in bed in a pair of Paul’s pajamas. When Paul would enter, he would invariably find Tesla under the sheets. Yet the inventor did not seem to sleep much.
He was having visions. That became clear as soon as Paul had been able to coax a few words from Tesla’s lips. The words that finally came, as Paul sat by his bedside, were faint.
“A great winged beast,” said Tesla.
He said little else that Paul could understand that first night. On the second, he produced a few more words, but no greater meaning.
“A fire,” Tesla said. “All I see is fire.”
“Yes!” Paul exclaimed. “There was a fire. In your laboratory. But that was months ago. You escaped and you’re safe now.”
Tesla shook his head defiantly. “No no no no no. With us here. I see a fire engulfing around us all.”
On future evenings Tesla would describe further visions. There was talk of horned beetles. Then there were bloody rivers and a solar eclipse of infinite length. Eventually he described an undead army and a colony of ants whose bodies were comprised of particles from distant stars. As the days passed, Tesla’s descriptions grew more verbose. He invariably spoke as if these terrible sights were not dreams, but scenes before his waking eyes. They were all as real to him as Paul, Agnes, and Fannie, as palpable as his small bed and the single candle that lit his room.
Paul brought a fresh box of saltines every night. Tesla devoured them ravenously. He seemed so hungry, yet he wouldn’t eat anything else. How Tesla hadn’t long ago perished from scurvy, Paul could not imagine. As the nights went on, and Paul helped Tesla to his crackers, he attempted to get more information about the nature of Tesla’s condition. The inventor knew who Paul was. He had some memory of their history together. By the second week, Tesla even referred to him by name, just as he had with Agnes from the start. However, the names “Edison” and “Westinghouse” seemed to have little effect on him. He either didn’t remember who they were, or, in his current state, didn’t care.
Yet Tesla’s presence had the most unexpected effect on Agnes. She seemed to honestly like having him there. Often Paul would arrive to find her already at Tesla’s bedside. Often she’d stay after Paul left.
Tesla seemed to soften her. To smooth the edges in her practiced smiles. When she laughed with Tesla, it was a different laugh than the one she’d boomed at Stanford White’s party. Or even than the little ones she offered to Paul. With Tesla, her laugh was warmer. It wasn’t comedy, it was companionship.