Chapter 32
CHARY
Eighteen months later
Chary was seated in the Chesterfield by the fireplace, halfway through Morris’s The Water of the Wondrous Isles, the second part, for the second time, and finding himself still as enamored of the protagonist, Birdalone, as every other man in the thing seemed to be, when Laurie burst in a little later than usual—three minutes past six o’clock.
Friday nights were printing nights, and this a particularly significant one.
“It was supposed to be my story,” Laurie hissed as greeting, unwrapping his scarf as he crossed the apartment and sat down at his desk.
He threw his hat across the parquet and a newsprint onto the desk.
“I knew something was going on with the laborers. I put him onto it, that horrid week. Didn’t I?
Hiram only tripped and fell into it thanks to his two lovers.
And how many lovers does a man need, anyway?
As though he’d set—out—to write it—at all—!
” He thumped his fist agitatedly on the desk.
Chary had rather seen this coming. He unfolded from the chair, stood behind Laurie, and put the tips of his fingers into the caramel-silk at the man’s temples.
“Haven’t you read it already? I mean, didn’t he give you a draft?”
Laurie harrumphed. “Yes.”
“Well, then.” Chary peered over his shoulder. On the desk was, of course, the page-proof for tomorrow’s Rational Appeal, winter-damp and underarm-crumpled.
Society Writer Records Labor Trafficking Ring! Year-long Undercover Effort to Expose Illegal Exploits of Corrupt Blueberry Foreman.
And the byline: -H. Sumner-
Laurie grunted in pleasure and slowly began to relax.
“From what you’ve told me of Mr. Sumner—and knowing my brother”—Chary coughed—“he may well have actually been clued in to the operation from the beginning.”
“Before I had eyes on you, you mean,” Laurie murmured. “Before Raberding’s press bounty.”
“Yes. Well before. Remember, you do have the two novels on him.”
“Mm-hm,” Laurie hummed. “That’s true. Only, you should see him roll his eyes at the advertisement Sam put. It’s riiiight below all his society stuff.”
Chary smiled. He dug his claws in harder, and Laurie groaned.
“Also, Mr. Tulley,” Chary said, after a moment, “you’ve had fingers in not one but two pieces of progressive legislation passed this year.”
“Yes, true,” Laurie said thoughtfully.
Chary sealed his mouth against a laugh. Humble, Laurie wasn’t. He didn’t need so much propping-up, but Chary enjoyed it nevertheless.
“Perhaps next time, you could share a byline?”
“Maybe.” Laurie sighed. “Honestly, maybe I’ll leave it all to him. I don’t know if I’ll keep writing serials. New York is falling out of love with its muckrakers, and the novels sell better.”
“Sam would murder you.”
“Nah. He’s got Hiram now and Sarah besides.”
Chary tried to stuff his cowardice back where it belonged. “Are you tiring of Gotham?”
After more than a year together, sharing lives in an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment in the old uptown, he didn’t know if Laurie would or could give up New York life, and hadn’t asked him to, because Chary still had no real home to offer.
He’d sold the Fifth Avenue townhouse and used its capital to invest in the semiautomatic machines.
The Berryfield house had sat empty since Raberding’s death.
Laurie had offered this apartment as a refuge while it was being scoured clean and redecorated.
August, in his last letter, said nothing of the northwest balcony room remained, and the sitting room was now what they called a “living” room, with a raised ceiling.
“Gotham is Gotham. I’m tired of being someone else half the year. Being away from you.”
“I’m glad I get you at all. I’m still grateful you’re a free man.”
Laurie smiled and tilted his head back. “Thank God for closed trials, lawyers, and a lack of corroborating witnesses. Kiss me, please?”
Chary obliged.
“Oh,” Laurie said, after. “Y’know what else. I picked this up in the mailbox. It’s for you. I’m sorry I was grumpy at you first thing instead of giving it to you.”
Chary opened his eyes. “It’s for me?” Who would send him letters besides August and the ladies at St. Michael’s? They seemed to yet regard him, at least, if only because of the stained glass.
Laurie chuckled. In four fingers, held up to Chary’s level, he splayed envelope and letter-opener.
Chary took them gingerly. “Who… Hmm. Return to… offices of the National Child Labor Committee, Broadway. Care of—” He nearly dropped it. “No! The Florence Kelley? What could she want with me?”
Laurie laughed. “Well, open it! Actually, wait. Now, don’t stab me with that thing.” He swiveled his chair around, nudged Chary close, then wrapped arms around his corseted waist and pulled him down into his lap. “Okay. Read it.”
“Why didn’t she write to you?” Chary whispered. “You’re a member.”
Laurie bit him gently on the arm. “I’m just a writer. They want the source. Open it.”
“Oh, Lord. Undo m-me, please. I find I can’t breathe.”
Laurie was very good at this by now. He shifted Chary forward, leaned back, and had the laces’ bow free in a second; those laces above the waist and below loosened; at last, he brought his hands to the corset’s top edge, insinuating rough fingertips in the soft, warm space of skin and shirt and boning, and in a few back-and-forth tugs had the front busk unhooked.
“Are you undone?” he whispered.
Always.
“Thank you,” Chary breathed. He set the letter opener aside with a shaking hand and unfolded the letter. “You didn’t dare pull any strings for me, did you?”
“No strings!” Laurie said; he flung the corset onto the Chesterfield. “’cept those. Promise.”
Chary laughed until he got past the letter’s polite niceties, and then he gasped and had to hang on to Laurie’s forearm.
“Oh, Laurie. Ms. Kelley would like me to attend the annual meeting of the Committee as a speaker. Oh gosh—practically next week. Thursday the thirteenth, in Cincinnati. ‘The Scope and Progress of the Child Labor Movement,’” he quoted.
“Oh, damn,” Laurie said appreciatively.
“You really did not do this? They should be asking you.”
“I really did not, and they really should not. A dozen reporters have been putting out the same as I did, in less-progressive magazines. It’s been thoroughly done.
” He squeezed around Chary’s waist. “That’s a good thing, means folks are catching on.
But no one has your perspective on it, Chary.
You’re a progressive, industrialist philanthropist who worked in his own factory for almost a decade, practically eliminated boys’ work with machines, and then turned ownership of the whole damn thing over to his fellow journeymen.
Journeymen whom he thereafter convinced the Local Sixty-Eight to accept.
I think you might could have one or two things to contribute. ”
Laurie, of course, left out all of his own influence, particularly the part where, being a man of a thousand useful connections, he’d interceded with the Local.
And where Chary had kept legal ownership of the blueberry-jam side of things, the rights to the jar-mold that finally sealed—which had turned out to be a fairly profitable thing on its own.
And August, who had not patented his semiautomatic so that everyone could implement it without a lease.
“I’m only twenty-six! They cannot think I have anything sage to say.”
“Pfft. Nobody knows that.”
That was true. To the public, he was still Charles Edward Wright, Jr., the eldest son; the intrepid Sarah had not gone back on her word to keep the secret—he hoped not only because she now shared an office with Laurie and Mr. Sumner.
Laurie liked to joke he’d live a very, very long life.
“They,” Laurie said, “see a businessman who turned his company on its end after a mere year of ownership and made a difference. And an example.”
“But—four thousand estimated attendance, including a US Senator!” Chary shuddered. Why on earth would they give that figure at all? “I’m going to be sick. And… next week? I-I don’t think I can.”
“Nonsense,” Laurie said. “Of course you can. I’ll write you a speech.”
“No, you shan’t,” Chary protested. “I haven’t attended Columbia, but I can certainly write my own sp…” And then realized he’d been quite set up as Laurie laughed into his shoulder. “You menace.”
“You’ve been writing that speech your whole life. You could do it straight from that brain of yours.”
Chary sighed. “But it is a lot at once. Two weeks…”
“It’s just perfect for a deadline,” Laurie said, in the tone of a man who knew the stimulus a deadline could induce—and who also knew Chary’s tendencies. “D’you want further incentive?”
“Mm?”
“We’ll be back in time for Christmas. In Maine.”
Chary sat up straighter. “Christmas… in Maine?” He twisted around. “Is this something you had planned or something you are suggesting to me now?”
“I can’t lie to you. It was supposed to be a surprise for at least another week, but I thought with that unexpected thing”—he pointed to the letter—“I’d better fess up to this one.”
Because he loved him. Because he knew Chary was now—since Raberding—more easily unsettled by sudden change or surprises. He would have prepared to tell him weeks in advance.
“But,” Chary said, hesitantly hopeful, “the house has been shut up for more than a year?”
August didn’t live there anymore either.
The man who had once declared Maine akin to house arrest now lived half-feral with Brasher—and the occasional “undercover” Mr. Sumner, he supposed—within the wooded acreage Chary had signed over to him.
He remained legally dead, working as the foreman for the blueberry acres under a pseudonym, taking the place of the indeed corrupt and eventually ousted Mr. Herbert.
Whether penance, preference, or necessity due to the blueberries, Chary hadn’t asked.
He was safe now, and that was what mattered.
That and he visited New York quite a lot.
“Mrs. Leonard came through once more. Found me a service that does setup for vacationers. Furniture covers off, Christmas tree up, that sort of thing. I think she maybe felt badly about being taken in by Sarah.”
“Oh, dear.” Chary bit his lip. Vacationers.
Laurie’s gaze dropped to his mouth. “That don’t mean she did it for free. Not at all. Massive finder’s fee.”
Chary swallowed. “I knew that wasn’t the case.”
“But,” Laurie went on, “she said that even with full-time occupancy, live-in domestics are rather out of style. Not that we could afford it,” he teased.
“Full-time?” Chary whispered. We?
Laurie put his thumb lightly on Chary’s Adam’s apple.
“So, there’ll be Mrs. Simon on Mondays and Thursdays.
” He grinned. “Thank God for her, honestly. A maid once a week. A real one. A handyman on call in case your brother’s busy and the chimney falls over.
Laundry sent to a service, ‘like the big city’, she said. The rest of it… we’ll be on our own.”
“Laurie.” Chary was going to cry.
“Yeah?” Laurie said playfully. There was a smile in his voice, though Chary couldn’t see it for tears. He let Laurie’s hand around his jaw lead him closer, closer, and felt his way through the small, hot space between their lips ’til less than a breath remained; there he halted.
“You can’t,” he whispered.
“Why not? I’m so proud of you,” Laurie whispered back. “I love you. I want you to be happy. At peace. You love that house. The willows. The greenhouse. The glass furnace.”
“I love you,” Chary protested, “and want you to be happy. And so, I cannot ask you to give up all of Manhattan.”
Laurie drew back. He raised an eyebrow, set his pretty, stubborn jaw. “That’s just it, Chary. You wouldn’t have asked—until it would’ve almost broken you. C’mon.”
“No,” Chary said softly. “You’re right.”
“Mm-hmm.” Laurie leaned back in, chin tilting, expression dreamy and relaxed.
“And while I like you very, very desperate for certain delicious breaking points”—Chary flushed—“this one’s not for playing with.
Nothing has to break to keep me at your side.
” He kissed Chary once, a sweet peck. “New York is just ways and means. This apartment’s just convenient.
I’m not in love with it.” He kissed him again, head tilted the other way.
“I can write my novels from anywhere.” And again.
“It’s been long enough, Chary Wright. You get to go home. You get to have a home.”
“I love you,” Chary sobbed, and kissed him, hard; the chair creaked beneath them and slid a little on its casters, almost into the wall; Laurie’s head fell back and knocked gently against plaster.
Chary held his face like Laurie had held his the first time they’d really touched, two-handed, tremblingly, like precious porcelain.
Laurie let Chary open his mouth and slide his lips on his beautiful flat ones, let Chary’s tongue in, over and over, ’til Chary groaned and pulled away.
He’d have his sunrises, after all: the east-facing room with the library connection.
The hobby furnace, too—he hadn’t worked glass in almost just as long.
Maybe August would even come to stay, for a sunset once in a while, so long as the house didn’t haunt him.
His letters of late hadn’t seemed haunted, but the opposite.
“So,” Laurie murmured, breathing short and fast, chest heaving, dark-brown eyes almost black. “Does this mean I get railed boneless for my domestic efforts?”
Chary kissed him again.
THE END
THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY, INCORPORATED
RECEIVED AT 8:05 A.M. 12 DEC 1906
TO: L. Tulley 140 E 37th St NYC
L:
U STILL OWE ME.
- H
THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY, INCORPORATED
RECEIVED AT 8:30 A.M. 13 DEC 1906
To: H. Sumner Appeal Building, Park Row
H:
MOVING TO MAINE. U CAN HVE MY DESK. HAPPY?
- L
THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY, INCORPORATED
RECEIVED AT 9:30 A.M. 14 DEC 1906
TO: L. Tulley 140 E 37th St NYC
L:
NO.
- H