“What’s that you’re writing?” the Jinni asked.
“Nothing,” Arbeely said, too quickly. He ran his hand over the desk blotter, as though sweeping away the remnants of his thoughts. “Just a letter home.”
The Jinni eyed his partner. Arbeely had gone home to Zahleh after the purchase of the Amherst, to see to his mother’s health and his family’s property. He’d returned in oddly changeable spirits, ebullient one moment and downcast the next—but had said little of the trip itself, only that his mother and aunts had fed him fit to bursting. At the time the Jinni had attributed his strange moods to the Amherst’s purchase, and the general upheaval that had gone along with it. Now, though, he wondered.
I’m obligated to ask what the matter is, he heard the Golem say. Otherwise I’m arrogant and uncaring.
“I’m going up to the roof,” he said. “Care to join me?”
The man sighed, clearly daunted at the thought of the climb in the August heat, but then nodded. He opened a biscuit tin upon his desk, and pocketed a large handful of its contents. “Can’t disappoint the children,” he said, and gestured to the showroom door. “After you.”
They passed through the simple framed doorway, and into an iron fairyland. For weeks Arbeely had painstakingly organized the showroom into individual sections, grouping like with like: gates and folding screens, bed-frames and dressing mirrors, lamps and candelabra—only to come in the morning of the reopening and find that the Jinni had rearranged it all in the night. Now, the men walked a foot-path bordered by knee-high fleur-de-lys fencing that wound past cushioned chaises longues backed by pierced screens, all lit from above by elaborate strings of lights. An ornamented gate opened to a dining table laid with wrought cutlery; a curving bench encircled the trunk of an iron oak, its knotted branches hung with lanterns and wind-chimes. A bed-frame even sheltered beneath the oak’s branches, complete with sheets and pillows and a counterpane strewn with tin-plate leaves. This last was immodest enough that Arbeely had sputtered and gone red to the ears—yet even he had to admit that, its hints of hedonism aside, the Jinni’s arrangement was far more appealing than his own.
At the end of the showroom was the heavy door to the stairwell. They opened it and began their climb, passing each of their tenants in turn. The lace factory took up both the second and third floors; beyond the open doors were dozens of girls all bent over the clattering looms, their hands moving swiftly back and forth. On the fourth floor was the biscuit factory, smelling as always of sugar and vanilla. Here, white-aproned workers gathered on the landing to smoke cigarettes and fan themselves, their faces red with heat. Their foreman was among them, and he greeted Arbeely with enthusiasm. Arbeely had endeared himself to the man by personally rerouting a tricky gas line, and in his gratitude the foreman seemed determined to keep his landlords stocked with a lifetime’s worth of biscuits. They reassured the foreman that they had plenty, then bade him a good day and passed the fifth and final floor, a cigar factory that added the spiced tang of tobacco to the already warm and heavy air. Unlike the bakers, though, the cigar-men were a laconic lot, and only nodded as the pair went by.
At last the door at the top opened into the sunshine—and now the children who’d been playing marbles and jacks on the Amherst roof sprang up and converged upon Arbeely. The man grinned, his poor spirits forgotten, and began to pull biscuits from his pockets like a conjurer.
The Jinni took up his usual station by the rooftop’s edge, well out of the way, and rolled a cigarette. He liked to watch Arbeely in these moments. Odd moods aside, the man seemed more purposeful these days, more certain of himself. When Sam Hosseini or Thomas Maloof stopped in for a chat, there was a new measure of respect for him in their eyes. Maryam, too, had watched Arbeely with pride at the Grand Reopening; but when she’d looked to the Jinni, her smile had cooled, as always. At times he wondered what selfless deed or sacrifice it would take to earn Maryam’s regard. He suspected that whatever it was, it would be beyond him.
Soon the children returned to their games, the biscuits exhausted. Arbeely brushed the crumbs from his hands and came to stand beside the Jinni, looking out over the thin row of rooftops to the docklands beyond. Neither spoke for long minutes. The dark and faraway look had returned to Arbeely’s eyes. What was bothering the man? The Jinni stubbed out his cigarette, gathered his resolve—
“How are those finials coming?” Arbeely asked suddenly.
His resolve fled like a startled animal. “Halfway done,” he said. “The last few were too brittle—the mix was wrong, I think.”
The man nodded. “We’d better get to it, then.” And back down the stairwell they went, to find a well-dressed husband and wife standing nervously at Arbeely’s desk, as though afraid the denizens of Little Syria might eat them while they waited. Quickly Arbeely ushered them into the showroom, and the Jinni was left alone.
It was well enough, he decided. As the man had said, there was work to do. He turned from Arbeely’s desk, and went into the storeroom.
The storeroom ran the length of the workshop. It was perhaps twenty feet wide, though the high ceiling made it seem much narrower, a windowed canyon. He passed racks of graded iron bars, tubs of powders, half-finished commissions, the dumbwaiter that brought up coal from the cellar below. At the end of the storeroom, a thick black curtain hung behind the shelves of supplies. If one didn’t know it was there, it would be easy to mistake for the wall itself.
He slipped between the shelves, ducked behind the curtain, and entered his private dominion.
It was a small, square
