Chapter 24 #3
Chary put his forehead on the door and breathed. They should’ve been back by now, surely. Why weren’t they? What was August keeping from him? Why?
He returned to his own room and there stared at the connecting door. Ostensibly, Laurie slept just past it. And why not?
Before he could lose his nerve, he knocked.
Halting, uneven steps from beyond—the door flew open. “Chary.”
Once again to see Laurie’s handsome face was a hot relief. “I’m sorry. Were you asleep? I shouldn’t have—”
“No, I wasn’t. Can’t. You neither?” He stepped back. “Come in. I was gonna just order some more food—you want some?”
Chary didn’t know what he wanted. Not food. He did follow Laurie into the room. It was a mirror image of his but with a couch. The bed did not look slept-in. The table held lined papers a-scattered, one tossed-down pen, a silver-dome meal cover, cutlery, and empty plate.
“Or at least help me decipher this menu. Block off the prices. I don’t think I can do it twice in a day.”
“I’m not hungry; I’m sorry. But by all means.”
“Oh, well, then nah.” He tossed the menu to the table. “I dunno why I care when it’s expensed, and Sam’s paying… You oughta see the bills Hiram racks up when he’s out on assignment. I’m the least of it.”
Laurie seemed nervous. He had put back on his out-of-season suit, complete again since Chary had given back the jacket hours before. Chary himself was very aware of his thinly robed self.
He folded the robe over himself. “Because you feel as though you owe him enough already?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. What’s lunch against an education, a career, and furnished bail?”
“Columbia University?” Chary guessed. “He sponsored you?”
“Columbia,” Laurie confirmed. “Funny thing about socialists—they walk the walk, a lotta times.”
“That worked out for him.”
“Probably not for much longer,” Laurie said wryly.
Chary found himself not even hesitating. “What if I could give you the whole tapestry?”
“What?”
“The whole story.”
“I’m not writing about you, Chary, I said. It’s not happening. Alright?”
“Not that.” He almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before.
If anyone could understand, a socialist would probably stretch furthest. A socialist with a career dedicated to worker rights and toppling monopolies even more so.
Lawrence Tulley was the perfect candidate.
A natural choice to crack open the industry in the name of change.
“Say I could get you into the glassworks. You’ve written about child labor before, but never glassworker boys.
Would Sam Sullivan want something like that? ”
“Would he?” Laurie said. “Geez. No journalist’s gotten into a glassworks firsthand, and you know it. Probably, he’d cry.”
“So, it’d be something to give him?”
Laurie began to pace: bed to couch and back again.
“Yeah, it would.” He whistled. “Hell. That kind of thing, I could serialize it. You know how many glasshouses there are on the East Coast? And you’re not unionized—no problem with advertisers…
When were you thinking to let me in? Next week? God, if I even have a job next week.”
Hence Chary’s urgency, the frantic vibration beneath his skin.
“Well… I was thinking tonight. It’s Wednesday. I should be working.” Then it occurred to him: “Of course, your ankle…”
“Tonight? Jesus. Anyone, excepting you, Chary Wright, should be working. But my ankle will be fine. I can walk, can’t I?” He demonstrated across the carpet.
“If you’re fine, then I am,” Chary said stubbornly.
“Ow!” Laurie jerked forward, clutching at his ankle. Chary startled. “No, sorry,” Laurie groaned. “Looks like next week it will have to be.” He hissed in pain for two halting, hunching steps, and then, halfway raised up, he winked. Pain gone.
“Oh, Lord above. You scared me, Laurie Tulley.”
Laurie wheezed with giggles and fell back onto the bed. “Come sit down. Did you even try to sleep?”
“I did. I couldn’t. I can’t stand to be idle; that’s all. August isn’t here, and I can’t sit here alone, waiting for the telegram that will mean our lives are soon to crumble down around our ears. I cannot.”
Laurie reached for him. “Hey. You’re not alone. So your brother’s alive, and the world will know it. It will be a scandal, and sensational, and awful, but you’ve weathered those before. He won’t leave you out in the cold, will he? He didn’t before.”
The hot shame was almost too much to bear. But surely, admitting it now was better than Laurie finding out tomorrow morning, in all-black newsprint, what he had done. Who he truly was. “It isn’t… solely that. You don’t yet have all the threads.”
“Chary, I don’t need ’em. Not yours.”
“You want the truth,” Chary insisted.
“I don’t— You know what, wait a moment.” Laurie launched up and turned to the papers on the table.
He ordered them, squinting. “Here we are.” He thrust them toward Chary.
“Read these. Here’s why I haven’t slept.
I can’t expose Raberding for what he is and was to your brother—but I sure can write about him wanting to forcibly monopolize the island’s glass industry with theft and murder.
” He cleared his throat. “Sorry it’s not a fair copy.
It’s just preliminary, mostly theories.”
“Theft and murder?” Chary took the papers.
They weren’t messy, anyway; Laurie apparently wrote drafts confidently, passionately, in great swooping loops of longhand.
The man himself had done unspeakable things to him—with his mouth—and yet the reader in Chary was still a bit thrilled at the strangeness of Lawrence Tulley’s unedited words in his hands.
The Murderous Depths to Which a Capitalist Will Go to Wreak Monopoly: An Exhortation for Anti-Trust Laws.
“Good Lord. You think it truly was Raberding behind it all? He didn’t once mention having me attacked. Not in all his gloating about rescuing me.”
“Not only your attempted murder. Sam Border. James Delargy. Wiktor Roczeń. Dmytro Tkachenko. All of them disappeared since August took over at Wright Glass and made himself a socialite. Since he met up with Raberding. The timeline’s looking perfect.”
“Oh. So you’ll set out to prove Raberding killed them for his own motivations?
” Chary paused. He hadn’t yet read the draft, and there he was about to begin refuting its basic premises.
“But why would Raberding have my gaffers arrested and murdered to get to August? I told you, August had no contact with any of those men. It couldn’t have been personal. ”
“He’s Rockefeller to your Carnegie. Any means to an end. Anything to reduce confidence in Wright Glass. Just another rung to collapse the ladder from the inside so he can buy you out.”
“Shareholders don’t pay attention to those kinds of things,” Chary tried.
“The welfare of individual workers? Immigrants? Glassworking is inherently dangerous. Men do die, of silicosis and worse. So long as production increases over time and there are no major scandals influencing customers against us, the shareholders are largely satisfied. I have more than a majority stake, anyway, even if they were not.” He bit his lip. “I always have had.”
Laurie didn’t hear it. He tapped the papers. “Would you read it, though? Raberding wanted a New York glass. He told me himself. ‘Why shouldn’t New York have a consolidated glassworks?’ he said; I’ve quoted it—”
“Raberding wanted a New York glass, but I’m now convinced it was a means of elaborate overture toward my brother. A proposal.”