Two Moons (33 page)

“You’re right. I really
am
a philosopher. I took the wrong diploma entirely. In fact,” he said, his voice starting to rise, “I could—”

“You’re more an addled poet,” she said, sweetly, trying to calm him and herself.

“I sing the body electric—”

Afraid he would start singing for real, as at Riley Shinn’s, she pointed to the wealth of ice cream dripping down the great block of ice. “I’d like some more.”

“Tell me something. I must know: how
are
we going to get our miracle machine through Customs? My faith in you is complete, but I do
find myself curious. I keep assuming it’s through the good offices of someone your father once knew at the Treasury. Would that be right?”

Amazed that her facility for lying had blossomed so gaudily, she heard herself responding: “No, it’s my brother-in-law. He can radically reduce the fee, and let you pay it in a few token installments over several years.” All she had needed to answer was “yes.” The useless lie and its embellishments had appeared like spontaneous growths in a laboratory dish. (To start with, John May had no brother.) Would she even remember the details of this duplicity? She wondered if she was developing powers of deception for further use with the War God, who no doubt imagined her, even now, toiling at the Observatory. “And that’s the only brother-in-law I want to speak of,” she added. “No more talk of requesting help from Henry Paul, not unless you want Miss Gray and perhaps even the admiral knowing what you intend to do. Now get me more ice cream.”

She knew from his contented expression—he was probably back dreaming of the little Mangin—that he would never again bring up the import duty. But when he turned directly toward her, he insisted upon one thing: “Only after you’ve danced with me.”

“Out of the question. Ice cream.”

“No dessert for you until I’ve finished my dancing.”

He pulled her on to the floor and into some complicated human geometry, whether a minuet or quadrille she hadn’t the least idea. But, fearing the even greater embarrassment that fleeing the polished marble would bring, she began to move. She felt dozens of female eyes on her; they were agog that such a creature was
here,
and wondering, too, in their brief looks at Mr. Allison, if this young man was well enough to have come out himself. His fast, slender figure might be fetching from a distance, but close up it revealed itself as
too
slim, and his color looked decidedly suspect.

And yet, the more they watched, the more relaxed Cynthia became. The dance
was
geometry, nothing but, and Hugh Allison was an expert, describing its arches and angles and small circles with his
extended arms and shining shoes. All she had to do was replicate the shapes, become the double-side of his glittering mirror. Within two minutes a dozen years had fallen from her face, and she cared no more about the cruel company and the waste, cared no more if the ice cream melted into a flood of gruel, so long as the violinists didn’t stop.

“Tell me, Mrs. May,” asked Hugh, when the pattern required that he hold her by the waist and sweep her twice around him, “how strong are
your
immortal longings?”

“Stronger and stronger,” she replied, as the dance’s next movement spun him off into a line of three males, each of whom faced his partner from a half-dozen feet away.

“And yours?” she called across the distance.

“Nearer and nearer fulfillment.”

A moment arrived when the couples had to orbit an empty center, to swirl like a solar system without a sun. “Our” machine, he had called it. It was now her vision, too, a
folie à deux,
and she wanted it, as much as she still wanted him. Her hand in his, moving faster now, she asked: “How do we get inside?” How
would
they, after crossing the mud and debris at the site, get themselves and their machine into the absurd, abandoned plinth of the Monument?

“The same way,” he said, while the music sped up and their feet followed, “that the light finds us. The same way,” he said, as they reached maximum velocity, “that we make love.” They spun and drove forward in a single movement, and the violin bows beat like wings. She trusted her feet and looked into his eyes.

“Breaking and entering,” he explained, his voice flying on the music.

Cynthia stood outside the packing room, putting on her hat. The days remained as warm and wet as last month’s, but they had grown short, and she hoped to be back at Mrs. O’Toole’s before the sun was gone. She had just left a bag of oranges for Hugh in Mr. Harrison’s office, where there was considerable activity for 4:45
P.M.
Mr. Gardner, the instrument maker, had come bustling in, quite agitated, from the machine shop, unable to find some of the equipment on the admiral’s latest list of items requiring service or superannuation. Mr. Harrison, “expecting an unexpected guest,” had had no time or suggestions for him.

Now, though she had trouble believing her ears, she understood why. The nearby voice of the short-notice visitor, just arrived and braying for the superintendent, could belong only to the War God. A hairpin still between her lips, Cynthia leaned against the pier of the 9.6-inch and listened to the conversation coming from the doorway of Mr. Harrison’s office on the other side.

“We were excited to get word of your coming,” the flustered clerk was saying. “I’ve sent someone to bring back Admiral Rodgers. He’s over at the Corcoran Building. As you may know, the Almanac Office just moved over there, and he and Mr. Newcomb are having to sort out some confusion over—”

“Yes,” said Conkling, always bored with explanations of his inconvenience.

Cynthia made a fast, unseen flight back to her desk, her bonnet swishing in her right hand as she went. She did not want Conkling to find her, but knew she would be wise to let that happen—to make him think that she had just arrived for one of the long working nights she had said they required of her. Instead of putting her bonnet on the clothes tree, she threw it atop a pile of papers, to give the little room an appearance of her fresh arrival.

Conkling’s visit, she realized, was in keeping with the strategy he had displayed throughout the whole first month of the Special Session. He had contrived to make the Custom House nominations look like the last thing on his mind—less important than the New York State bakers’ complaints or gilding the statue atop the Capitol or, it now seemed, the future of the Observatory.

“Allow me to wander,” she heard him saying to Mr. Harrison, who had stuck to the senator during a noisy passage toward the Chronometer Room.

“Yes, by all means,” said the clerk. “You’ll see just why the $28,909 has been requested in the interim, for repairs.”

“Indeed,” said Conkling. “Plus thirty-five cents. I’ve
read
the report to Secretary Thompson, my good man.”

“It’s not for me to say, of course,” Mr. Harrison went right on. “But I’m sure the admiral will make the point that spending a hundred thousand dollars for removal instead would be the better bargain. So long, of course, as there’s no factory nearby to shake the instruments and obscure them with smoke.” Like some powerful ether whose effect varied with every person exposed to it, Conkling had turned the discreet, unflappable clerk into a chattering font of presumption.

Within another minute, the two men came upon Cynthia’s little office, and the senator—all annoyance flooded out by delight—was crying “Aha!”

“Mrs. Cynthia May,” said Mr. Harrison. “Our most exceptional computer.”

“Charmed,” said Conkling, taking her hand.

“Stunned,” replied Cynthia.

“I shall let Mrs. May tell me about her work,” said Conkling, dismissing the clerk with a definite glance. “She can guide me back to your office in time for the admiral’s arrival.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Harrison, who was subsiding back toward normality, except for a slight confusion about Conkling’s familiarity toward Mrs. May.

“You have time for our esoteric affairs?” asked Cynthia, once she and the War God were alone.

“Oh, yes,” said Conkling, who made a fast visual inventory of the space she inhabited every night. “The nominations are dying a slow death. I’ve just had the Commerce Committee draft a letter to Sherman asking the exact grounds on which my men have been dismissed. That should prolong the President’s agony another week or two. I spent today on other matters entirely—in fact, I took to the floor to explain my latest interview. Did you read it? Everyone else did.”

“Yes,” said Cynthia. Friday’s New York
Herald
had arrived by messenger at Mrs. O’Toole’s this morning.

Conkling twirled a protractor on his right forefinger and laughed. “I did have to take back the bit about praising Tilden. That really was going too far, and I had to blame the newsman for making up exactly the words he’d heard from my mouth. But I did
not
retract what I said about the Republican party.” He put down the little measuring device, and all at once seemed to glow before her eyes, as if attached to the engine of Hugh’s magic machine. “There is one single bulwark, Mrs. May, against the old slavocracy, against German radicalism, against the silver-coining forces of inflation.” She had begun to count, as if he were reciting the Seven Deadly Sins. “That bulwark is the Republican party,” he went on. “And
that
is why I look upon these wealthy New York reformers as such fools. They are to be the worst sufferers if this nation passes back into the hands of the other party, controlled in the South by evil traditions and ruled in the North by its socialistic elements.”

“You’re quoting yourself.”

“Good!” said Conkling. “Then you
did
read the interview.” He closed the office door and took another look at the pile of photographic plates and charts beside her hat.

“I don’t see the shawl I gave you.”

“It’s too warm.”

“And I don’t see the earrings.”

“It’s too ordinary a day for them.”

He lunged forward and took her in his arms, crushing her against the well-tended muscles of his torso. For two or three seconds, before she began to struggle, she allowed herself, in the aroma of cologne and soap, to feel not the danger and caddishness of the moment, but a shameful sense of safety; if she chose, she could surrender to this man who helped control the forces that had always pressed down on her; that had sent her father packing and her husband to war; that appropriated and canceled all the little pots of money by which people like her rose in the world or fell into its alleys.

Suddenly, out in the corridor, the approaching sound of song:

“Oh, Susanna, oh, don’t you cry for me—”

“Oh, sweet Jaysus!” Cynthia cried.

“An expression you learned from the Irishwoman?” whispered Conkling, as he pulled away from her. He picked up a chart and began to study it in the last seconds before Hugh Allison knocked at the door.

“
—with my banjo on my knee.
Hello!”

She glared at him. “You’re here early, Mr. Allison.”

“And you’re here la—”

“What
brings
you here?” she quickly interrupted.

“Trans-Neptunian paperwork, Mrs. May. Until the Sun is fully down, we astronomers are just celestial clerks. You know that. But as soon as it’s dark, Mr. Todd and I shall sweep between 8° 30’ and 9°. Poor Toddy thought he saw his future a little above 9° last night, but it fizzled into another false alarm. Sir,” he said, finally getting around to Conkling, “I don’t believe we’ve met.” He shook the man’s hand, and
without waiting for his name or giving his own, turned back toward Cynthia. “I’ve got something to show you. Find me when you’re free. I’ll be in the library with the old commodore.”

Conkling, furious at being ignored, said, “Sands has come over to see
me.
To provide an historical perspective while Admiral Rodgers speaks from a future one.”

“Well, it will be a pleasure for you,” said Hugh. “And who would you
be,
sir?”

“Mr. Allison,” said Cynthia, “this is Senator Conkling. Senator Conkling, Mr. Allison.”

Hugh burst out laughing. “Senator
Roscoe
Conkling himself? Well, sir, you’ll break my mama’s heart if you don’t give Matt Butler his seat! Anyway,” Hugh said, his interest in politics already spent, “you’re probably both here waiting for Harkness. I hear he’s over with Mr. Newcomb and the admiral. Until they get back, Senator, I suggest you get the
present
perspective from Mrs. May. You could have no better guide to this place. Just don’t keep me waiting
too
long,” he said to Cynthia, waving good-bye as he vanished back into the corridor. The door’s glass pane rattled, and Cynthia’s heart thumped. At least, she told herself, he hadn’t come in and grabbed her by the waist. At least he hadn’t called her Urania.

Recovering her poise, she looked at Conkling and asked: “Why shouldn’t I strike you?”

“Who,” he replied, “is that preposterous person?”

“He’s the most brilliant man here.”

“He’s an idiot. And he looks ill. I can’t bear being around sickness.”