“Which photograph?”
Gladys’s question startled her back to clarity. But Bess could barely find the words to answer her. What could she say that wouldn’t sound cracked? “The portrait of Harry—I thought . . . I thought his expression was serious, but I’m looking at it now and he’s smiling.”
Gladys paused. “If there’s one thing I learned from Harry,” she said from across the room, “it’s that images aren’t always what they first appear to be. Neither was he, after all. As we both know.”
Chapter 3
THE BEER HALL
June 1894
The night they were married, he came to the window with her as the moon rose, flaming like a phoenix, over the steaming white heat of the afternoon. A few blocks away, they could see a crowd of Italians swarming a carriage that was making its way slowly down the street. Inside was a woman Bess’s age, in a white veil, next to a man in a black suit, and he was kissing her passionately. The members of the crowd were throwing flowers into the carriage, and the summer blazed.
“Do you wish that was you?” Harry frowned. “That you had a proper wedding?”
“I don’t need all that,” she reassured him, although there was a part of her that wondered whether she would ever be as happy as that bride, who had probably known her groom since grade school; that was the way the Italians did it. It was the same with the Germans, and if she had stayed at home she would doubtless have married one of the boys she had played with in the street as a child. But she had entered into a different life now, and she would never relinquish it for afternoons stitching clothes and cutting noodles, the tedium of the Brooklyn winters and the endless counting of rosary beads after dinner.
She turned to Harry, wondering how it was supposed to happen next, now that they were married. “I really don’t know what to call you,” she said. “And what will we call each other?”
Harry kissed her forehead. “We’ll call each other Mr. and Mrs. Houdini.”
“But those are just stage names. It seems odd to address you as Harry Houdini.”
“When I was twelve,” Harry said, “after my brother Herman died, and my father’s school failed and he moved us to Milwaukee, I made him a promise that I would take care of my mother, if anything should happen to him. But I couldn’t do that there. I ran away from home, to Missouri, and I began studying magic, and I gave up on Ehrich Weiss.” A dark cloud passed over his face. “Ehrich Weiss has nothing to offer me anymore.”
Bess felt her cheeks flush. She had never known a person to just decide he was going to be someone new, and commit to it so wholeheartedly. She felt she had entered into a world where anything could happen, where magic folded itself around them like a live thing. This was the kind of woman she wanted to be—not a timid, unripe girl, afraid of the dark, but the kind who left home and fell in love and married the man instead of waffling over him in confession for months on end. She wanted to live with Harry’s unapologetic certitude.
Harry bent down to retrieve something from the cabinet behind him. When he turned around, he was holding a glistening bottle of champagne. Bess clapped her hands. “Where did you get that?” They’d barely had enough money to buy the rings.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, and then, shrugging, “a gift from Dash.” He stuck a pocketknife into the cork, and the top popped off and shot across the room.
Bess shrieked. “Is it supposed to do that?” Harry filled a pewter cup with the shimmering liquid and handed it to her. “Aren’t you going to have any?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I never drink alcohol. It slows my reflexes.”
Bess considered her own glass. She had never had champagne before, and she’d been drunk only once in her life. “Well, fine,” she said and poured the contents down her throat in one gulp.
Harry blinked at her, then burst out laughing. “You’ll feel that,” he said.
Her throat was already burning. She stepped toward him and, almost imperceptibly, brushed her hand against his. “But that’s what I want,” she said. “I want to feel everything.”
Harry stepped back and looked at her, then reached out a hand and placed it on her back, where the laces of her dress were tied. Even in the dark she could sense his uncertainty, the utter seriousness of the moment. She turned so he could untie her. He fumbled with the knots, but after some effort they came free, and the dress slid to her ankles. She stepped out of it and stood before him, shivering even in the heat. He took her hand. Her corset and drawers had yet to be removed, but she could feel the rise and fall of her chest, the white flesh visible. She lifted his hand to her and stepped against him so she could feel his breath, like a sacred thing.
“We’re married now,” she said quietly. “You can do what you like.”