And also that she barely knew Eva at all. With each new glimpse into Eva’s life, Julia saw more clearly their differences. Wealth, family, education, and especially race carved a deep chasm between Julia’s world and Eva’s. By those measures Eva should be a novel exotic to her, as she was to Pablo and his tourists. From where Julia now sat, secure in the beauty and comfort of Philip’s fine apartment, Eva’s friendship might easily recede into some hundred-dollar Harlem souvenir. Already she sensed the story of Eva’s misfortune becoming gasp-worthy entertainment at parties.
Julia drummed a useless fist against her thigh. If she stood by and watched that unfold, she’d betray not just Eva and their budding friendship but everything she dared to believe about herself.
Philip’s wry smile faded. For several seconds they held each other’s gaze. They’d been through a crucible together last fall, one of Philip’s careless making. They had been adversaries then, but the experience had left them with an oddly shrewd understanding of each other. He seemed to be measuring her now, as she was measuring herself: the direction of her next move.
“Come,” he said.
She absently followed him into the hall but balked when he pushed open the kitchen’s swinging door. The thought of food made her slightly ill.
Philip, however, took hold of her elbow and guided her into the room. Spacious and tidy, it smelled of peonies and bread. A fresh loaf lay on a board beside a block studded with knife handles. Philip asked her to slice it as he poured water from a simmering kettle into a teapot.
Julia considered the knife handles. The first she pulled out had a short tapered blade, not big enough. Her second choice produced a cleaver, no better but perhaps serviceable.
“May I?” Philip extracted a long serrated blade with a rounded tip. He cut off the heel and two thick slices and carried the board to the table in the center of the room.
They sat on two stools. “I gather the sordid gist,” he said, “but perhaps you’d care to fill in the more vital bits?”
She hesitated. She desperately wanted help in making sense of what she’d just learned. But from Philip? He’d proved helpful before, in his needling and contrarian way, as she’d grappled with the conundrums of Naomi Rankin’s death. And he’d kept his word, leaking nothing to his uncle Kessler. When he put a cup of fresh tea before her, she managed to lift it to her lips without a splash. She could do this. She had to.
Where to begin? Only twelve hours ago she’d expected to be regaling him with Timson’s penchant for Böcklin. Now his hideous art was not worth mentioning.
“I told you about Eva Pruitt. She’s the author I met last week at Pablo Duveen’s party. There was a great to-do because Arthur Goldsmith bought the rights to publish her first novel. Apparently Pablo brokered the deal. He certainly took great glee in announcing it.”
“Championing New Negroes.”
Julia nodded. “He invited Austen and me to go with him to Harlem last night to see Eva’s show. She’s a singer, it turns out, at one of the posh clubs. Afterward the owner, Leonard Timson, invited us to his rooms to meet her.”
“So you told the sergeant. It’s what you didn’t tell him I’m craving to hear.” Philip nudged forward the remaining slice of bread, generously buttered.
“Timson stole Eva’s manuscript and then quite viciously refused to return it. He put a gun to her head, Philip. Apparently there are some vile scenes and characters in it, and he feared it’s a roman à clef. Eva objected bitterly, of course, but he wouldn’t budge. He threw it into his safe and swore he’d never let her have it.”
Philip nodded to register this. “And then?”
Julia told him how she’d followed Eva into the back bedroom but found it difficult to describe what had happened there. She recalled some moments vividly but also remembered sensing that much was beyond her grasp, that her mind had not been subtle or perceptive enough to notice, much less understand, all that she was witnessing. “She wasn’t murderous but erratic. Talking to herself as much as to me. She was disheartened more than angry. I tried to think of ways out of the dilemma. I thought she might return Goldsmith’s money or just write another novel for him instead.”
“Spoken like a publisher,” Philip said.
“She’s already spent the money.”
His eyebrows rose.
“She knew Timson would be difficult, but she seemed confident she could retrieve the manuscript. She seemed to know what it would take to mollify him.” Julia squirmed at a rude noise from her stomach.
“Keep talking.” Philip tied on one of Christophine’s aprons, rolled up his sleeves, and explored the Frigidaire again, pulling out eggs, milk, butter, and cheese.
“You can cook?”
“Another legacy from Aunt Lillian.” He whisked the eggs, added milk and herbs, and lit another ring on the range. Julia remembered the cantankerous old woman she’d met last fall, the maiden aunt who had been his childhood playmate, teaching him to jest and joust and to skewer staid respectability with a gimlet eye. Upon her death he’d learned that Lillian, his surrogate mother after her sister Charlotte’s death, was in fact his natural mother. It was still too tender a knowledge to mention.
Tossing butter into the heating pan, he said, “On Cook’s days off, she trussed me into an apron and stationed me at the stove.” He poured the mixture into the hot pan and adjusted the flame. “Mind you, I couldn’t bake bread to save my life. But a good roast chicken or omelet or stack of griddle cakes—I’m your man.”
He shaved cheese onto the board and brushed it onto the firming eggs. After wrapping a towel around the pan’s handle, he shook it gently. “You say she was determined to retrieve her manuscript.
