The World of Tomorrow

A late train could have Cronin back at the farm before midnight. He would walk from the depot, he had decided, hoping that an hour in the country air would leech the city out of him and give him time to assume the mask of the man Alice believed he could be. Once he was back on the farm, he could climb into bed next to Alice and wake to a hot sun and day of work. He hadn’t had a decent night of sleep since he’d arrived in the city, holed up as he was at a cheap dive west of Columbus Circle, within spitting distance of his old haunts and the Plaza Hotel, too. The room held little more than a cot, with a washstand and a basin in one corner. Mounted on the wall was a small mirror set in a tarnished gilt frame, and next to the washstand a single chair that a previous tenant had begun to paint canary yellow, only to lose interest or find other lodgings before he could finish.

What business would Dempsey leave unfinished? He was a young man, and given his start in life—good parents, educated people with a fine house near the university—he should have done so much better than this. Gavigan said he was a killer, with a trail of bodies to prove it, but though the color had returned to his face, Dempsey’s eyes shone like a frightened rabbit’s. Cronin hoped that fear would make him smarter, or at least less foolish, about what was to come—even if all that remained to him was the comportment he brought to his own death. With some effort, Cronin again choked down whatever part of himself felt sympathy, or responsibility, for what would become of Francis Dempsey.





FIFTH AVENUE



MICHAEL AND YEATS WATCHED as Francis and another man climbed into the back of a black sedan. In the moment before Francis disappeared into the car, his head swiveled side to side, searching, almost frantic. Michael stood on the bench and tried to catch sight of the car, already lost in the crush of traffic. “Where is he going?” Michael said. “And where’s the girl? Oh, why can’t you be a proper ghost and fly after him?”

Yeats ignored Michael and peered at the scrum of cars on Fifth Avenue. He had appeared on the bench with Michael shortly after Francis and the girl had gone inside the museum. He seemed disappointed that he had missed the chance to meet another of Francis’s lady friends. “Who was that rough-looking chap with your brother?” Yeats said. “Someone you know, or—”

“I don’t know anyone,” Michael snapped. “Not here, and not in my own past.” The exhaustion he felt earlier had not entirely left him, and the sting of losing Eileen for reasons he could not recall ached like a fresh wound. The hotel seemed a long way off, and after a last glance at the avenue, he stepped from the bench to the sidewalk. He dug into his pocket for the business card of the hotel and held it up for Yeats to see. “Do you suppose we should use this again?”

“No, I do not suppose,” Yeats said emphatically. “Your brother has proven himself to be entirely unreliable. If we are ever to make progress, then you and I must take matters into our own hands.”

Michael stared blankly. “Progress toward what?”

“The question of my being here. Of my being at all.”

“We’ve been abandoned in the middle of the city and you want us to crack the meaning of life, is that it?”

“There is a reason why I am here and why only you can see me.”

“Why must there be a reason?” Michael said, exasperated.

Yeats seemed genuinely startled. “I can’t believe I have to explain that to a seminarian.”

“I am having a difficult time accepting that there is a reason—not just a cause, but a reason—for why I cannot hear or speak. This is what God wants for me?”

“Who said anything about God? The spiritus mundi is bigger than any notion of God. Even the idea of God is a part of the great spirit of the world.” Yeats ran his palm over his forehead and up the crown of his pate. Wisps of white hair sprang in unruly directions as his hand passed over them. Michael could sense his frustration. “I am offering you a quest for truth—an opportunity to tear the veil that divides life from death. To glimpse the universal memory that binds us all. And you propose we waste our hours in a gilded cage waiting for your brother to return from his latest assignation?”

Down the block, an older woman crossed the street, holding the leash of a small dog. Looking first at her and then at Yeats, Michael had to wonder whether he was the woman or the dog.

“Mr. Dempsey, my condition and yours require exploration, and there are people in this city who could be of assistance—better, certainly, than that chess-mad doctor your brother brought you to see. During my last visit to this city—made when I was among the living—I met many accomplished mediums. One in particular, a woman called Madame Antonia, had an acute spiritual sensitivity.”

“So just fly away without me. Find the nearest crystal ball and start gabbing.”

“I would like nothing better, but I remain linked to you.”

“And you think a medium can tell you why we’re stuck together?”

“Madame Antonia can tell us many things. She also happens to be a specialist in psychical healing.”

Michael thought of the bed, the sofa, and the thickly upholstered armchair by the window. He was knackered, and the hotel offered so many places to sleep. But Yeats was right. They were surrounded by mysteries whose solutions could not be found in the hotel. “Fine,” he said, “but it’s not my psyche that needs healing. It’s my ears.”


THEY HAD NO business card with Madame Antonia’s name and address, and Michael was not going to try pantomiming Take me to a medium to a cabdriver. Yeats had a dim memory of Madame Antonia living in the Italian Quarter, as he called it, and an even dimmer memory of this neighborhood being in the opposite direction of the Bronx. An open-topped double-decker idled in front of the museum, slowly taking on passengers, and Michael proposed that they join the queue. When he reached the front of the line, Michael began dumping coins into the till until the driver waved him aboard. He found a seat on the upper level, in the front, and as the bus stuttered its way down Fifth Avenue, he could see the hotel drawing into view. At least they were going in the right direction. From his vantage point he was able to retrace his steps from the Saturday promenade with Francis, and to point out to Yeats the Harpies, the red-stone church, Atlas shouldering the hollow globe. He had expected Yeats to be more impressed by this hodgepodge of myth, story, and symbol, but Yeats seemed too wrapped up in his plans for communing with Madame Antonia. He could only sniff at the statues.

Michael left Yeats to whatever spiritual navigation he was conducting and let himself enjoy the view. Clouds scudded overhead, as if leaping from one tower to the next. As the bus passed the Empire State Building, the city began to change: the buildings were just as densely packed but not so gargantuan, five or six stories instead of thirty or forty. Gone were the gold-lettered shop signs and the windows full of diamonds and silk gowns. They were moving into a place of work, of commerce without glamour. The intersections became crowded with pushcarts, taxicabs, delivery trucks, and people—always so many people—with a hard cast to their eyes.

The bus lurched to a halt, beset by an ever-swelling crowd that filled the streets. The people all seemed to be moving in the same direction, toward a diagonal boulevard that branched at the next intersection. Somewhere there was a parade, a rally, a demonstration. Michael saw men in the crowd carrying placards but their messages of support or protest flowed across the boards like liquid Sanskrit.

“I’ve been thinking,” Michael said. “About the reason for our being linked together. Would you care to hear my theory?”

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