“I thought you couldn’t leave your pipe.” Eddie tried his best to be civil in referring to the liveryman’s weakness for opium.
“I don’t wish to be a slave anymore. I’m switching to gin.”
They both had a laugh over that.
“And you?” the liveryman asked. “What do you intend?”
“Once I’ve done what I promised, I’ll go back for Coralie. If she’ll have me.” He noticed the liveryman’s dour expression. “I take it you don’t think she’ll leave with me?”
“Do you think it’s her choice?”
“It should be,” Eddie remarked. “And it will.”
“Then you’d best make sure you get rid of him,” Eddie’s companion told him. “I know him well, and what’s his is his.”
All that morning she could hardly keep away from the window. When she returned from Manhattan, she’d slipped back into the house before her father came home, but sooner or later a person breaking the Professor’s rules was bound to be caught.
“You’re a jittery one,” Maureen said. They were making fritters to serve during the living wonders’ tea break, but Coralie had dumped the dough in too quickly and the oil had splashed up, nearly burning them both.
“Spring fever,” Coralie assured her.
Maureen gave her a sidelong glance. “Is that what it is?”
Coralie offered a compliment to deflect attention from her nervous state. “I’m not a cook, though you’ve tried your best to teach me.”
Fortunately, there was much to be done, and Maureen was too busy to investigate any further. She was soon enough taking tickets at the entryway of the museum. Coralie had no one watching over her actions and was free to steal into the yard at the appointed hour. Eddie was already there, crouched beside the hydrangeas. Maureen had added vinegar to the ground to turn the blooms bluer, and they blurred against the color of the sky. As soon as she saw him, Coralie felt as she did when she was about to dive into the river; somewhere inside her there was a gasping, thrilling release of earth and air. She went to stand beside him in the grass. She smelled like salt to him, and some delicious variety of sweet, caramels. As for Coralie, she noticed everything about him in that instant, the cast on his hand, the shape of his head, the broad width of his shoulders, the way he gazed at her with his dark gold-flecked eyes, as if she had never been a monster possessing a monster’s heart and history.
The liveryman had left his carriage down the street, and he now joined them in the garden. It would take two strong men to complete this task, both with steady hands and strong stomachs. Coralie felt a stab of fear. She imagined what might happen if her father discovered them, but she forced herself to push such thoughts aside. They went into the kitchen the way a dreamer enters into a dream, slowly at first, then all in a rush. The liveryman led Eddie down the plummeting stairs to the cellar. They had no idea of how much time they had, and when Maureen might return from the ticket booth, so every instant mattered. Eddie gazed over his shoulder and saw the darkness close in on them as Coralie shut the door, ensuring that anyone entering the kitchen wouldn’t wonder if someone was in the cellar. Eddie quickly put the keys to work. Two turns of the locks and they were in.
“Don’t look at anything,” Eastman muttered. “Trust me, brother. You’ll think you’re in hell if you see where you are.”
They went directly to the wooden box and lifted it from the table. Nearby, the enormous bass was being kept on ice, its fish blood drained into a bucket. The ice had melted and some water gushed out of the makeshift coffin. Eddie tried his best to pay no attention to the skulls of varying sizes set upon the shelf, or the unborn child with abnormalities in its face and limbs that floated in a jar of pale yellow formaldehyde.
“Work, don’t look around,” the liveryman reminded him.
And so, Eddie turned his attention solely to the task at hand as the two men carried the coffin through the narrow door of the workshop. They managed to climb the stairs with the liveryman leading the way, the weight of the coffin resting on Eddie’s shoulder. Coralie guided them through the kitchen, and as she did Eddie took note of the plates and cups, the mops and brooms in a corner, napkins and tablecloths, sweets ready for tea, the stuff of everyday life. And yet amid these homely items Eddie’s thoughts turned to darker things—blood, and sorrow, and men who had no aversion to sewing through flesh with coarse thread. Before he had time to gather his thoughts, they were in the garden, the light so bright it brought tears to his eyes. The hydrangeas were so blue it seemed the sky had fallen. Coralie kissed him quickly, then whispered that she had given him her heart. It was not possible to live without one’s heart, yet she was smiling when she backed away. He thought about the first time he had seen her in this same place, as she came onto the porch, how it seemed as if he’d known her for a thousand years, and how it seemed that way still.