Chapter 53
Jack hadn't been expecting to be quite this much of a mess while Katherine is away, but here he is. He's fine so long as he's at work, he reckons, so he stays late Tuesday night, and then Wednesday night too, churning out cartoons and illustrations at a rate that he'd never manage if he was feeling somewhere close to sane. He doesn't eat much, or sleep much, or do much of anything other than work and worry and scratch at the back of his neck until it bleeds. On Thursday he gets the call from Katherine, Mrs. Rhodes shooting him indulgent smiles from behind her desk as he presses the receiver to his ear to hear her voice crackling down the long-distance line. He walks about with a ridiculous grin on his face for the rest of the day, gets ribbed about it by Walter and Daniel, and doesn't even care.
The next day he stops by Elmer's selling spot to grab a copy of the Sun; Elmer just smirks at him and tells him that it's on the front page. Jack forces himself to walk around the corner before scanning the paper for the article, burying his nose in the newsprint, squinting at the swirling words, determined to push through and gobble them all up, because they are Katherine's words, and he's pretty sure he can do anything for her.
RAILROAD TELEGRAPHERS STRIKE
Practically All the Operators on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Leave Their Keys.
Jack knows, of course he does, that Katherine is merely reporting the truth of the matter, she's too ethical to do anything otherwise. Still, he can't help but feel like she's writing this article directly to him, the inclusion of Santa Fe in the subheading a calling out across a thousand miles, as blatant as his name being written between the lines.
DALLAS, Tex., Dec. 6 – At 11 o'clock this morning a strike of telegraphers on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad system in Texas was begun. President Dolphin of the Order of Railway Telegraphers ordered the strike and the men quit their keys from Galveston, Tex., to Purrell, Indian Territory, on the main line, and also on all the branches. One man only remained at work in Dallas.
That, Jack thinks, must be the telegrapher who is sending Katherine's train steaming back home to him. Despite the man clearly being a scabber for not participating in the strike, he can't help but feel a little grateful to him.
The disagreement between the company and the telegraphers originally was over the wage scale. The company finally agreed to arbitrate the wage scale, but declined to arbitrate as to rules and regularions. This last issue precipitated the strike, which was held off nearly ten days by negotiations. A bulletin to-night from Temple, one of the most important points on the Santa Fe system, says: "All went out but two or three from here to Galveston. All are out on the San Angelo branch and the same on the two lines to the north. The Santa Fe is running only regular passenger trains. The despatchers are reported to-night to have gone out also. Only two men are at the office in this city and one of these is a policeman." The strike involves over 600 telegraphers.
He's so bloody proud of her; he wishes that she were here so that he could tell her. But she's on her way home to him, safe and sound, so he goes about his day with a smile on his face as wide as the Hudson River and calls by the hardware store on his way home to buy some new paints.
When he gets home, Jack scarfs down a couple of slices of toast as fast as he can, then puts on his old painting clothes and sets to work in the little empty bedroom, shifting the bed against the side wall and out of the way. They won't need it in here for very much longer, he supposes, and wonders how they're going to get rid of it once it needs replacing with a crib. The thought thrills him, a little full-body shudder. Jack grabs a pencil, takes it to the wall and begins to plan.
By the time that the front door opens downstairs and he hears Davey call out his name, Jack has finished the background.
"Upstairs!" Jack calls out, listening for David's footfalls on the stairs.
"Woah." Davey stops in the doorway, staring at the wall. "Jack, this is amazing."
The mural is unfinished, a jungle background in a wash of green, trees climbing up the wall, with the pencil outlines of tigers, tropical birds, and monkeys just visible beneath the paint, ready to be filled in. It will be beautiful, David can already tell, can already imagine a tiny version of Jack pointing to the animals and naming them. He's never seen a nursery quite like it, but he sure as hell knows that if he ever has children then Jack is painting their rooms for them.
"Take it easy, 's jus' a bunch o' trees." He shrugs, handing Davey a can of paint to hold for him. "You alright?"
"Oh, yeah," David stammers, moving along as Jack works his way across the expanse of wall, holding out the can, "uh, when can Miriam and I come for dinner again?"
"Traditionally, you's s'posed to wait until you's invited."
"Yes, well, I want to spend more time with her and she had a really nice time on Monday – thank you for that, by the way – and she said that she'd like to spend the evenin' like that again."
Jack blinks, stops painting, turns. "Y'know that she doesn't mean me an' Kath, right?"
Davey frowns. "But-"
"She wants to spend the evenin' wi' you again, you idiot."
"Oh."
"That's 'bout as obvious an invitation as you's goin' to get, Dave." Jack rolls his eyes, turning back to the wall. "She might as well wave her hands in the air an' shout court me!"
"Are you sure?"
"You's so dim, sometimes, y'know that?"
David is quiet for a moment, processing. "So… how do I ask to court her?"
"Y'jus' asks."
"That's incredibly unhelpful." Davey frowns. "How did you ask Kath?"
Jack has to hold back a laugh. He's grateful that he didn't ask Katherine outright, honestly, because despite his many less than subtle hints that he found her incredibly attractive, he's pretty sure that such a candid question would have gotten him slapped and not much else. No, they'd fallen into this, more or less, something that he never thought would happen to him, as good things don't usually come his way without some sort of catch. Still, he's not complaining.
"I didn't. She kissed me first."
"Wha- well that's not fair!"
"Look," Jack sighs, "jus' walk up to her, an' say d'you wanta go to dinner wi' me on Friday night?"
"I can't do that," Davey frowns, "we both observe Shabbat."
"Pete's sake, Davey," Jack cries, despairing of his friend entirely and sending paint flying off his brush, luckily onto the dust sheet and not where he's just been painting, "it don't hafta be a Friday!"
"Isn't that a bit indirect?" Davey wrinkles his nose. "What if she thinks we're goin' to dinner as friends?"
Jack picks up a smaller paintbrush and begins to outline a parrot perched on one of the lower branches. "Ask to kiss her at the end o' the night an' she'll figure it out pretty quick."
"I can't do that!"
David's eyes go very big and very wide. He certainly can't do that. What if he does it wrong? What if he bumps her with his nose? (He's not stupid, Rawlings keeps telling him that his is enormous, though he doesn't much care about what Rawlings says so long as he doesn't try to break it again.) What if she doesn't want him to kiss her and Jack has completely misread the situation?
"Well, 's better than not askin'." Jack shrugs. He's tried that a couple of times, kissing a girl without asking her first, and whilst occasionally it's worked out for him, he's come to the general conclusion that asking first is vastly preferable and much less likely to end with him getting slapped.
"No, I mean… kiss her."
Jack turns back to him, really slowly, raising one eyebrow with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes and on his lips. "You's never kissed a girl?"
David flushes, his voice a little irate. "I've had more important things on my mind!"
Jack has to hold back a snicker at the way Davey's face turns fire-hydrant red. He's so close to ribbing him endlessly for this; he probably would, in all honesty, if it wasn't for the way that Davey had treated him when he came to him for help with his spelling and his numbers. David hadn't said anything about him being stupid. He probably shouldn't either, so he bites his lip. Honestly, that kid. He can organise a union, but, oh no, kissing a girl is too much of a challenge for him. David looks like he can't decide whether to drop to the floor in misery or tell Jack off for being a smartass, so Jack takes pity on him.
"Look, kissin' is easy." He says, ditching his paintbrush in the can of paint and taking it from Davey's hand to set it on the floor (mainly because the poor kid looks like he's about to drop it). He sets his paint-stained hands on Davey's shoulders, utterly unconcerned with the state of the boy's clothes, and looks him in the eyes. "Don' use your teeth, don' headbutt her, and use your tongue like 's hot soup an' not a fuckin' ice cream."
Davey nods, a little frantic, through most of it, right up until the end. Jack should have known the food simile was too far. "Wha-"
"Less is more, wi' tongue, 's what I mean." He clarifies, taking his hands off Davey's shoulders and returning them to the brush.
"This is goin' to go terribly." Davey groans, rubbing his hands over his face. And the kid calls him melodramatic, Jack thinks.
"Dave, she likes you. Jus' ask, no more o' your gripin'." Jack snatches up a paintbrush and thrusts it at the other boy. "You wants to stay, you can do the cuttin' in by the skirtin' boards."
…
Jack wakes up on Saturday morning with just one thought in his head. Today is the day that Katherine is coming home. (Yes, he knows that he's pathetic and utterly codependent. No, it's not going to put a downer on his mood.) Except, she doesn't.
Jack spends the whole day finishing off the mural and working on commissions, too jittery to leave the house in case she comes back and he isn't home and she thinks that he doesn't care. It's fine, he tells himself, two days is an average. Maybe the train got held up. Maybe she'll get in tomorrow. Or Monday, if the trains aren't all running on a Sunday. She's fine. Except he doesn't quite believe it. The hours on the clock tick by, and his leg judders up and down as he sits in the armchair. It's decidedly more comfortable without Katherine squashed into it as well, but decidedly less pleasant.
Nine pm rolls around. Jack rolls his shoulders. Gets up. She'll probably arrive tomorrow. You'll see. He goes upstairs, turns off the lights, lies down in bed. Going through the motions. He looks up at the stars on the ceiling. Could Katherine see the stars properly in Texas, he wonders? You can see them in New York, sometimes, but it's rare with all the streetlamps clouding them. He used to see them more when he was sleeping in his penthouse, which makes him wonder if the mural on their ceiling is as much to make him feel like he's outside and unrestricted as it is to quell Katherine's fear of him leaving for Santa Fe.
A noise, downstairs. Every muscle in Jack's body tenses. They used to listen out for those noises in the Refuge, the harbingers of the guards' so-called night raids, impromptu beatings that came upon them as surprise punishment for unknown wrongdoing. He tries to settle himself, tell himself that it's not the bulls, that it's not Snyder, that it's just a mouse. No, that is definitely the front door opening. One of the newsies, perhaps.
Swinging himself out of bed, he sets off to investigate, creaking down the stairs and flipping on the light switch. And there she is. Tired, travel-weary, blinking against the sudden burst of light, hauling a carpet bag in through the door, his.
"Kath." He breathes, prayerful, disbelieving. And then he's on her, sweeping her into his arms, breathing her in, making sure she's real.
"Missed you." She mumbles against his skin.
God, she's missed him? Does she know how badly he's missed her? He drops his head to her shoulder, turns it, presses his face into her neck, smelling the lavender-sweetness of her skin, the undercut of sweat from a day's travelling that smells the same as after they've been together. His lips find her pulse point, not kissing or sucking, just there, against it, feeling her heart beat, her blood pump, counting it, memorising it, etching her body into his skin.
"I bought the pape," he says, pulling back, cradling that beautiful face of hers in his hands, "your article was wonderful. So proud o' you."
A smile that splits her face in two. She's back. "I don't want to go away for a story again." Her words come out matter-of-fact, convinced, in a way that she hadn't been expecting but that just feels unbelievably right. She's back where she belongs, she doesn't want to leave again.
"What?" Jack frowns, his forehead creasing. "But, sweetheart, you was so excited?"
"I enjoyed it." She assures him, eyes and smile bright, her hands running over his chest, fisting themselves in the rough cotton of his undershirt because he's here for her to cling onto. "I just… once was enough. I want to do more, to write something bigger, and I want to do it from here. I like being with you – it's taken me so long to find somewhere where I fit in, I don't want to keep leaving it."
She doesn't know if she makes sense – hell, it hardly makes sense to her, this strange epiphany, this sudden absence of ambition and realisation of contentment. No, no, she hasn't lost her ambition, it's just shifted. And that's normal, isn't it? She's praying it's normal. Jack realised that Santa Fe wasn't his dream, so she can realise that journalistic fame isn't hers, can't she? She should feel ashamed, she knows, but she can't bring herself to, not when he's looking at her like that, like she's fallen down from heaven and into his hands.
Jack nods, slow, like he understands even though he probably doesn't. Sometimes, with Katherine, it isn't necessary for him to understand, just to trust. She does that with him, with his nightmares, after all. He is more than willing to return the favour. So he nods, like he understands, then tells her:
"I's got somethin' to show you."
He leads her up the stairs, then steps behind her to cover her eyes with his hands, guiding her forwards. She laughs and teases him, but lets herself be led, nudged forward by his chest at her back, his words informing her steps, keeping her from harm. And then he takes his hands away, and for a moment she believes that he's walked them through some portal right into the middle of the jungle.
"Thought it'd help the little one learn their animals." Jack smiles, wrapping his arms around her middle, one hand resting carefully on the soft, almost undetectable swell of her belly. "After that book you read the other week, The Jungle Book-"
She spins in his arms, kisses him, her hands on his face. "It's perfect." When she pulls away through, she frowns. Under her thumbs, Jack's cheekbones are just a touch sharper than usual, his face a little thinner, gaunter. "You've lost weight."
"I ain't been eatin' too much." Jack shrugs. "Jus' worried." God help her, she's melting.
"Come on, then. Let's get you something to eat and then we'll go to bed, hm?"