Emma sat low in the Duesenberg’s backseat as one of Story’s two drivers—the short one, a round-faced Italian called Buzzi whose woolly caterpillar eyebrows danced and kissed in the rearview mirror—told her about the latest craze to hit Rum Row: a purplish, syrupy concoction that originated in Jamaica, was shipped to the Bahamas for “modification,” then showed up on America’s shores in pearl-colored bottles marked SWEET RELEASE RUM.
It seemed a bad sign, that he thought her the kind of woman one could say such things to. Wasn’t she still Emma Murphy, of Leverett Street, of Church of the Sacred Heart? Maybe he knew about the perry press, but perry wasn’t brandy or whiskey and she and Story had made a straight deal for it. Buzzi wasn’t supposed to know about their other dealings. He had dropped her off this morning talking about baseball. Maybe for him nothing had changed since then—maybe the name of the drink didn’t even register as vulgar. But after Mrs. Cohn’s awful smile and her trilled, nasty compromises, everything Emma encountered seemed slightly skewed and salacious, as if she wore a pair of dark, twisted glasses. Buzzi winked at Emma and she had to hug herself she felt so exposed. She was still wearing Mrs. Cohn’s dress, a ridiculous getup for a nurse and now wet, too, at the shoulders from the rain as she’d run to the car—Mrs. Cohn had not offered her an umbrella—and at the sleeves from Mr. Hirsch’s bathwater.
He was fine. He had fallen asleep as the bath filled around him, but he was too large a man to drown like that. On his face was an expression of such pure, sleepy contentment that for a moment, she and Mrs. Cohn looked at each other, half drunk, and smiled. A simple moment passed. Then Emma got to work turning off the water and waking the man, who began talking at once, as if he’d only blinked, about how flood was better than fire, and did they know about the time Vera’s great-grandfather, Brink Bent III, too busy in love with a milkmaid, abandoned a candle on his windowsill? This was in 1870-something. He burned the house down but kept the help, and a couple years later the same girl bore him a bastard child whom Brink visited, every Sunday, in the old barn. The kid became one of Brink’s gardeners. Mr. Hirsch laughed. “I never heard that story,” Mrs. Cohn said with a far look in her eye, and Emma, who was doing her best to position herself between Mrs. Cohn and the sight of her uncle’s willy floating like pickleweed, who was thinking, Is there no end to these people’s woes? had to say, “A towel please.” Then she had to prod Mrs. Cohn to find her uncle’s clothes while Emma mopped the floor. The water had risen a full inch before clearing the threshold and running into the hallway, but when Emma showed Mrs. Cohn a cracked tile, Mrs. Cohn waved her off. She said she would call the man who took care of “that.”
“You know a woman called Ameralda Norris?” Buzzi asked. He had moved on from the subject of the rum and was working through his docket of local news.
“No,” Emma said.
“This woman has been hiding bottles in her chimney soot and selling them outta her wood box. Very clever. Very brave. I think so. I really do. But I am only a lonely roly-poly stone carver driving a woman around. This is why I ask you. Do you agree? That this Ameralda Norris is clever and brave?”
Emma said nothing. The windshield wipers thumped.
“She got the ax last night. Four pigs. Took her to the station with another woman what’s been making wine in her cellar.” Buzzi chuckled. His dirty teeth filled the mirror, followed by his gleaming eyes. “I woulda like to know these women,” he said, and Emma shivered. She sank lower in the seat. “It’s not as if they’re dead,” she said.