“I’m sorry about Arthur, though,” Stella said, mixing two glasses of ice and gin. “I know how much he meant to you.”
Ford had meant something to her, briefly. He had a rare combination of confidence and schoolboyish sincerity that reminded her of Harry, and she had met him during a vulnerable evening, when she had discovered another of Harry’s old love letters hidden in the bookshelf. He had assuaged her loneliness, for a while. But she would recover.
“It is a shame, isn’t it?” Bess sighed. “Of course, he was no Harry. But he was such a handsome man.”
She woke in the morning with a splitting headache, curled in the chair in her living room. It appeared to be late morning, and the white city light was bleeding through the curtains. The house was unbearably quiet, except for some voices on the street. The housekeeper didn’t usually come until noon, and she wasn’t sure what had happened to the butler; she imagined he had taken the dog for a walk. It was such a large house for her to be living in, essentially alone—three stories of heavy brownstone, two balconies, and a dozen rooms, the tall windows framed by intricate woodwork and mirroring marble-slabbed fireplaces. Most of the rooms were unused now. When Harry had been alive there was always noise, always a parade of friends and strangers coming in and out, always Alfred Becks, Harry’s librarian, with another delivery of books and John Sargent, his secretary, with a pile of letters. Harry had adored fame; he had liked to be admired, hated to be alone.
Even when it was just the two of them he had taken the rooms on the fourth floor for his study area, and she had taken the rooms on the third, where she would hear his voice call down three or four times before noon: “Mrs. Houdini, is my lunch ready?” While he wrote his books, he would send her letters, too, via the maid, who carried them down from the fourth floor on a silver tray. It was his little game. They were always elegantly packaged, even though the content was sometimes frivolous—lines from a poem, perhaps, or comments about the weather. Even when he was far, he always felt near. How ironic that during the fever of their marriage, the frenzied traveling schedule and public appearances, she had sometimes wished for time to herself. Now, it was she who hated to be alone. For the first time in her life since that one young month in Coney Island, she had independence, and was living off her own merit. And she still felt, and needed, Harry’s presence. His death, as had his life, consumed her, and until she reached him she did not feel that she could be in possession of herself entirely.
Perhaps that was why she had trusted Ford. His easy arrogance, the enormity of his charisma, had filled a void. And she had hoped, for the first time after so many failed occasions, that someone had gotten through.
Bess rubbed her face and looked at the clock, then jumped out of the chair. She fumbled for her robe. It wasn’t morning at all; it was already midafternoon. Could it possibly be two o’clock already? She couldn’t remember having slept so late since her circus days with Harry. She had to get to the tearoom. The vegetable orders were being delivered, and she couldn’t rely on anyone else to stand up to the deliveryman; bruised produce meant lost profit.