It was a lament, however lightly made. Julia’s hand returned to her forehead. The evening was beginning to etch itself into her skull. Philip stood and helped her to her feet. She lifted her chin, eyes closed, and received two kisses, one on each cheek. “You’ve a few last conversations, I imagine,” he said, hands warm on her shoulders. “But you’ll triumph. We Kydds live well with our ghosts. Even if I’m only a nominal member of the tribe.”
The night was still heavy with heat, and the house was silent. Christophine had long since gone to bed. Julia’s own bed awaited, sheet turned down, nightdress laid across the pillows. A vase of yellow roses stood beside the packet of Luminal and glass of water. In the heat the flowers’ fragrance swelled.
Julia undressed, laying her frock, stockings, and chemise across the back of the chair at her dressing table. She drew on her sheerest orchid pyjamas. She tied the drawstring across the hollow of her belly. When had she last eaten? Days ago? No, she remembered strawberries. Swallows of cheese, a croissant.
This was not right. She pulled the pyjama bodice over her head. She wanted to feel something, not that teasing cloud of weightlessness. She dug into drawers until she found what she wanted: a thin boy’s cotton undervest that she wore when she wanted to erase all but the faintest swells of her figure. Normally she needed no bandeau to achieve the flat, swift line of fashion, but for acute occasions, she used this little vest. She struggled to pull it on, wiggling into it as a lean sausage into a casing. That was it, the squeeze to numb the ache.
Her effaced form in the mirror pleased her. She padded back through the dark apartment and out onto the library balcony. A few stars punctured the low sky but offered no light. The chaise’s white cushions guided her forward. Wood decking licked the heat from her feet.
The cushions gasped at her weight, disturbed by this meaningless vigil, this determination to witness every hour of this day of death. That was what one did with life. One held tight and rattled it; one gave it no respite, demanding more when it offered less.
Julia twisted, stretching backward on the chaise like an acrobat in midtumble. Her back sloped down where her calves should rest, her legs poking up into the night from sagging silk trousers. Her hands splayed across her abdomen, collapsed into its bony bowl. The Mozart aria from Figaro throbbed in tempo to the pain in her head.
One ghost haunted her body; the other haunted her heart. Fused in death, Wallace and Eva clung to Julia together, their weight oppressive. The heat was ferocious. Bound into a child’s underthing, face flushed, skin slick—she couldn’t breathe. There was no conversation with these ghosts, only a wringing, a weeping of skin and sex. Eva and Wallace were dead. Ghosts of her making.
Julia twisted to right herself and sat up. She jumped to her feet. With a wrench she jerked apart the side seam of her vest, pulled it over her head, and tossed it away. The cool air felt glorious on her damp skin.
She went back into the apartment and, for the first time, walked past the dark kitchen and Christophine’s quarters, down the short hall to Philip’s rooms. No light shone from below the door. She tried the knob. It turned, and she went in.
He sat sideways in a deep window seat, his profile silhouetted by a distant streetlamp. He was smoking, a saucer for ashes balanced on his raised knees. They were dressed alike, he in black pajama trousers, she in orchid silk ones.
For a long moment they looked across the room at each other.
He ground out his cigarette and set aside the saucer.
“Lock the door, love.”
EPILOGUE
Several weeks later, Julia stood at the typecase with her stick in hand, composing a thirty-pica line of Garamont italic. Packing crates remained scattered about the studio, contents waiting to be sorted and organized. They could wait. She was eager to print invitations to her first party, a press warming three weeks hence. Jack had promised a small wood engraving that would also serve as a new pressmark, a fresh interpretation of her namesake gamboling kid. Although ephemeral, the invitations would mark Capriole’s baptism with American ink.
“Where else would we find her?”
Philip’s voice spun her around. He stood in the doorway, beside Christophine. He was back.
He’d been due to return last night after a long trip to visit friends in Cairo, Istanbul, and Athens. Slouched against the doorframe, he was lean as ever and dark as a Bedouin. He carried a parcel wrapped in brown paper wedged under his arm. “Silks!” Christophine exclaimed, lifting an armload of Mediterranean colors: lime, citron, azure, pomegranate.
“Clever man. Welcome home.” Julia set down her composing stick and extended both hands. He took them, kissing her lightly on both cheeks.
“I brought you something too,” he said. “Though it’s only from the bottom of my accumulated mail.”
Christophine made a clicking sound on the roof of her mouth—After so long away? Nothing better for his very sister?—and carried the colorful bounty to her new atelier in the second bedroom.
Julia kept hold of Philip’s left hand, revisiting its weight and warmth, those long, lithe fingers resting between her palms. “Good trip?”
He quirked his familiar smile. There would be tales to share, she understood, but later, deep in the lovely night ahead. He gave her the lumpish parcel from under his elbow.
Julia recognized Jerome Crockett’s writing before she read the return address.
“What do you hear of him?” Philip asked.
Jerome had moved to Chicago. The police had dropped all charges once their firearms
