The Virgin Cure (36 page)

“It was a beautiful thing to find them there, all happy and white,” he said. “It was like seeing a perfect Christmas goose in the butcher’s window.”

“You’re a liar, Mr. Dink,” I said, grinning at him.

Curling his finger, he motioned for me to come close. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he whispered. “They belonged to a girl I used to love. She kept track of the illusionist’s rabbits and doves before Miss LeMar. Magnifico could make her disappear, right out of a box, wings and all.”

It worried me to hear him say he used to love her, because I thought it meant they’d had a falling-out. Maybe he’d done something so bad that he didn’t deserve to be loved any more.

“If she catches me with them, won’t she want them back?” I asked.

“No,” he said, looking sad. “She’s dead and gone, my dear. Diphtheria.”

I tried not to show him how much that relieved me. I didn’t want him to think I was unkind. Still, I didn’t mind that the wings had belonged to someone who was now dead. I felt bad for him, of course, but was happy to have them, and happier still to find that there was no one to get in the way of my keeping them.

From the place where I stood as the
cartes de visite
girl, I had a fair view out the museum’s front windows, and could see much of the entrance hall as well.

Miss Eva Ivan sat at the ticket counter just inside the door. Holding her fan over half her face, she’d wink at the gentlemen patrons with the long, fluttery lashes of her right eye.

“Just the museum,” she cooed at a young man who came in on my first day there. “Or are you staying for the show?”

The young man put a quarter on the wooden countertop and slid it towards her.

She reached out and stroked his hand before giving him the ticket. “Enjoy yourself,” she told him, and then snapped her fan shut to reveal the other side of her face.

“Shit,” the young man cursed. “Holysaintoffuck, half of you’s a man.”

Miss Eva laughed, big and booming, dark and rough.

Shaking his head, the young man grabbed his ticket and shouldered his way into the museum. “Shit,” he said again as he passed me. “Shitshitshit.”

Miss Eva feathered out her fan and got ready for her next customer.

Nearly all of the gentlemen who came to the museum stopped to stare at my wares, many of them choosing to buy at least a card or two. The images of Mr. Dink’s human oddities were quite popular with them. Legless wonders, lizard men, bearded ladies, dog-faced boys, and an entire family of albinos, including Miss Sylvia LeMar, entertained the men to no end.

But it was Mr. Dink’s collection of exotic ladies from near and far that garnered the most attention. This was due, in no small part, to the fact that I kept them hidden away, to be viewed only by request. On Mr. Dink’s request, Dr. Sadie had sewn a secret panel in my skirt, which could be revealed with the simple pull of a ribbon. The panel was lined with red silk and was the perfect place for such wonders to inhabit. “Men clamour for the unknown,” Mr. Dink had said, knowingly.

One of the portraits featured Miss Suzie Lowe as Lady Godiva. She was sitting on top of a big, dark horse, her back turned to hide her breasts, her long hair flowing down around her shoulders. A large satin sheet was draped around her waist to hide anything else that might offend. She was looking over her shoulder, straight out of the picture like she shared a secret with only you.

My favourite of the hidden
cartes
was the Circassian Beauty, a young woman surrounded by tasselled cushions and Persian rugs. She was dressed in the costume of her native land, her skirt falling above her knee and the neck of her dress dipping temptingly low on her breasts. The most striking thing about her, however, was her hair. Unfettered by combs or ribbons, it graced her head like a lion’s mane, the wonder of it threatening to escape the borders of the picture. She reminded me of Mama in better days, her proud, menacing expression daring anyone who crossed her path to try to bring her down.

Mr. Dink liked her best of all as well. “One of the biggest regrets of my life, she was,” he confessed. “I let Mr. P.T. Barnum steal her right out from under my nose. Two thousand dollars he paid for her before I could even have my say. Then he told me I’d have to pay three thousand to win her back.”

Mr. Dink himself had started out with Mr. Barnum: his parents had signed him over to be a sideshow attraction when he was only ten years old. When Mr. Dink attained the age of majority, he told Mr. Barnum he was leaving him. The showman had wished Mr. Dink well when they parted ways, but now there was a fair bit of competition between them. Miss Eva had defected to Mr. Dink’s after the second of Mr. Barnum’s great museum fires. Stealing away the Circassian Beauty had been Mr. Barnum’s way of settling the score.

“Where did you get her in the first place?” I asked, wondering if there was some secret society that saw to the placement of sideshow performers. “The Circassian Beauty, I mean.”

“Oh, she wasn’t gotten, my dear girl,” he said. “She was made.”

He would say nothing else about her and I didn’t press him on it. The wistful look that came across his face whenever he saw her card told me not to tread there.

In the hour before the museum opened each day, Mr. Dink would sit with me and teach me about the actresses and personalities on the cards as well as the various performers who inhabited his stage. It soon became my favourite part of the morning. His stories of the many performers he’d taken under his wing and the secrets he knew about their lives made me forget Miss Everett and everything that went on in her house. Mr. Dink said his business was also filled with a certain amount of scandal and struggle, but, he assured me, “we’re just like family, only with more curious talents and ties.”

He’d tell me which stars were currently favoured by the audience and which ones were fading fast. He said it was important that I commit their names and histories to memory so that when a gentleman approached, I’d have something to say.

The men frightened me at first with their eagerness. Respectable gentlemen with fancy watches, pockets full of money, and perhaps wives and even children who loved them at home, would look at me, biting their bottom lip or the inside of their cheeks, lust in their eyes. Like newsboys waiting for the confectioner to hand them a piece of taffy, their hands would tremble ever so slightly as they reached out to take Lady Godiva or one of the other exotic beauties from me, the bolder of them wishing to unpin the card from my skirts themselves.

In the safety of Mr. Dink’s care, I soon learned to be a little cruel to them, taking my time to hand over the cards, waiting for them to turn red around the collar. I grew to want to make them blush. I wanted them to know that I was watching them just as closely as they were watching me.

November 23, 1871

I made a visit to Mr. Dink’s on the Bowery as Miss Eva Ivan was complaining of “sword throat.” It’s a trouble she’s had in the past, due to over-performing. This time, coupled with an eagerness to swallow multiple blades at once, she’s made herself incredibly sore. I prescribed a therapeutic tea, and spoke with Mr. Dink about the matter. He is in agreement that Miss Eva is in need of patience and rest.

When she is well, I plan to approach her to ask if she is willing to allow me to try a new method of exploratory examination on her. Dr. K_. has been successful in placing a rigid metal tube down the throat of a sword swallower, and they have been touring together the past three years to demonstrate the technique to other physicians. The possibility of seeing down an esophagus clear to the fundus is quite exciting!

In my same visit to the museum, I believe I may have had a small victory with dear little Moth. I hope that I am not simply dreaming, but I can’t help but think I have gained much ground with the girl. Winning her trust has felt akin to taming a cat. I try to tempt her with my warmth, my reliability, my concern. She is scared, I can tell, of what fate holds for her.

Mr. Dink has taken her on at the museum to help sell his collection of cabinet cards. While I’m unsure of the exact role Miss Everett is playing in all this, I am certain Mr. Dink possesses a good heart. At least Moth will now be away from that house more than she is in it.

S.F.

The New York Infirmary for
Indigent Women and Children
128 Second Avenue, New York, New York
.
November 24, 1871

Mr. Thaddeus Dink
Dink’s Museum and Palace of Illusions
The Bowery New York, New York
My dear Thaddeus
,

You have always been good to me, our friendship strong, the trust between us unwavering. I will never forget the kindness you extended when we first met—how you took my hand in yours when the whole of polite society refused to touch me, how you gave me my first opportunity to practise medicine outside of the infirmary. Your generosity has been the source of countless good things in my life and I am forever grateful for it
.

It is with great confidence in our friendship that I write to you now to ask a favour
.

Please, as circumstances allow, watch over Miss Fenwick while she is in your care. She is, as you so wisely noted, a dear child of exceptional beauty
.

While I understand you may have commitments to Miss Everett when it comes to the business of the theatre, I do hope that your commitment to being a gentleman allows you to see beyond business and into the heart of the matter
.

I have reason to believe the girl is far more naive than she makes herself out to be
.

With greatest admiration and affection
,

Sadie

When visiting the Gipsy’s house, the stranger is admitted by a little girl. This girl was probably, a pure article of Gipsy herself originally, but had been so much adulterated by partial civilization that she combed her hair daily and submitted to shoes and stockings without a murmur. Ragged indeed was this reclaimed wanderer; saucy and dirty-faced was this sprouting young maiden, but she was sharp-witted, and scented money as quickly as if she had been the oldest hag in her tribe; so she asked her customer to walk upstairs, which he did. She herself went up stairs with a skip and a whirl, showed her visitor into the grand reception room with a gyrating flourish, and disappeared in a “courtesy” of so many complex and dizzy rotations that she seemed to the eyes of the bewildered traveller to evaporate in a red flannel mist.

—Q.K. Philander Doesticks,
The Witches of New York

T
he man who’d accompanied Mae to the theatre the night of my first outing, a banker named Mr. Harris, had since come to the house to discuss a possible arrangement with Miss Everett. Mae’s beauty, he’d told the madam, had been impossible for him to forget, and according to Mae, he’d told her outright that he had “a keen desire” to have her before any other man. “Rose better pack her bags,” Mae bragged. “I’m on my way downstairs.”