The Flaming Corsage

Courting the Fireman’s Wife, Juky 1, 1906

TWO WEEKS AFTER the excursion Giles called Edward to say Cadden’s head was mended, and they were ready to play. They all met at Keeler’s men’s bar and Giles revealed that Sally would welcome a visit from Maginn tonight, after nine o’clock, when the house was empty. She wanted to hear of Maginn’s encounter with the hoodlums, and had heard he was a writer, as was she. She was writing a love story on the order of Wuthering Heights.

“Where are these rooms she’s taken?” Maginn asked.

“About three miles down the river road,” Giles said.

“Then I need a ride,” said Maginn. “The trolley doesn’t go that far.”

“Are you serious about this, Fitz?” Cadden asked. “That lovely woman really wants this clown to visit her in her rooms? At night?”

“She did seem excited.”

“This is unbelievable,” Cadden said.

“It’s normal,” Maginn said.

Maginn, at forty-nine, could not be called good-looking. His hairline had moved backward, his drooping gray mustache was ineptly darkened with mustache wax. He did not fit the lothario image, but his sensuality gave him an exotic appeal to many women. Why shouldn’t the fireman’s wife be one of his herd?

“I can take you down,” Giles said, “but you’ll have to find your own way back.”

“Maybe I’ll stay the week.”

“Just be careful. Her husband’s got a temper.”

“Isn’t he in Westchester?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Then why shouldn’t we believe her?” Maginn asked. “What do you think, Edward?”

“I don’t know what to think about you, Maginn. And I certainly don’t know what to think about this woman. You’re making a career out of intrigue.”

Edward said he had a meeting but would drop by at Giles’s house later to learn the outcome. Giles and Cadden drove Maginn to the house of assignation, which was dark.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Maginn said.

“You want us to wait?” Giles asked as Maginn stepped down onto the carriage drive.

“I’ll go with him, make sure he gets in,” Cadden said.

Maginn mounted the steps, knocked, won no response. He turned to Cadden, who stood in the moonlight at the bottom of the stoop, and shrugged, knocked louder. A light went on and Maginn smiled at Cadden.

“Who is it?” a voice from inside whispered.

“Is that you, Sally? It’s Thomas Maginn, your admirer from the barge.”

The door flew open and from interior shadows a male voice boomed, “So you’re the one who’s seeing my wife! Well, you’ve seen her for the last time, you home-wrecking son of a bitch!”

A man loomed from the shadows, pistol in hand, and fired two thunderclaps at Maginn, who was already on the run down the carriageway with Cadden.

“Hurry up, for God’s sake,” Cadden said.

“So there’s two of you!” yelled the man with the gun, and he fired another shot. Cadden fell on his face and Maginn kept running, turned to see the man coming toward him, and clambered wildly into the carriage.

“He’ll kill us all,” Giles said, whipping the horse. And the carriage careened down the drive. Maginn looked back and saw the man pointing his gun at the inert Cadden.

“Christ,” Maginn said, “that bastard shot Cadden for no reason. He’s killed him. He’s a lunatic!”

“Some men are like that about their wives,” Giles said, urging the horse to a wild gallop.

“We should go back for Cadden,” Maginn said.

“You want to get us shot too?”

“But he’s hurt. We’ve got to call the cops.”

“And tell them what?”

Maginn did not answer. They drove to Giles’s town house and found Edward waiting, sipping whiskey in the drawing room. Maginn manically recounted the terror, the fall of plucky Cadden, incoherent flight, his desire to straighten things out. Edward listened with head-shaking sympathy.

“If Cadden is dead he’s dead,” Edward said. He paused for reflection. “If he’s not dead he’ll probably admit to that irate man what was happening. But if he mentions Giles’s carriage, they’ll come here looking for you.”

Edward stood and paced.

“What you need is an alibi,” he said to Maginn. “We’ll go upstairs and get you into bed and if anybody comes we’ll swear you’ve been here for hours.”

“You’d do that?” Maginn asked Edward.

“What happened wasn’t your fault, was it?”

“You think it’ll work?”

“An alibi worked for those fellows who beat up the cops on the barge,” Edward said. “And what choice do you have?”

“I’d get into that bed if I were you,” Giles said. “We’ll figure out what to do about Cadden. I’ll get in touch with Sally. Here, have a drink.”

He poured a whiskey for Maginn, who swallowed it in a gulp.

Giles led the way to an empty bedroom and lighted a lamp. Maginn sat on a chair and took off his clothes.

“Underwear too,” Giles said. “If you’re naked it’s a better alibi. Am I right, Edward?”

“It’s logical.”

Giles handed the lamp to Edward, diminishing beside light, then pulled down the covers so Maginn could crawl beneath them.

Cadden walked into the room.

“Aren’t you in bed a little early, Maginn?” he asked.

Maginn by then had rolled fully under the covers and was lying in ten pounds of soggy gingersnaps that had been mixed with four quarts of warm chicken fat and spread between the sheets.

The puerile reduction of Maginn was a supreme success, but gave no satisfaction. It generated a predictable withdrawal in Maginn, but also in Edward, whose guilt was such that he stopped work on his new play, yet another confounding of intentions. Whatever seemed the right thing invariably proved otherwise. Could it be, Edward, that you were meant to be confounded unto the grave, that your destiny is linked to the everlastingly wrong choice? Was Katrina the wrong choice? Weren’t you ambivalent about your Stolen Cushion, about The Baron? Hasn’t Maginn made you doubt even The Car Barns? Is the play-in-progress a mistake? You’re a mindless achiever, moving toward you know not what. “Edward Daugherty, a formless lump of matter, was born into this world yesterday for no known reason.” Your sadness is a pose, Edward, your Weltschmerz sliced like liverwurst. You are different from everyone you know. You can’t afford to consider Maginn’s idea that all effort is a quest for the great cipher. You need a pair of spiritual spectacles to see things as they are. Understand this, Edward: you are still living your preamble.